


What Is Necessary

by sareliz



Series: Looking Long Into The Abyss [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Backstory, Happily Ever After, M/M, Modesty Barebone is adopted again, Original Percival Graves Saves MACUSA From Its Own Folly, Original Percival Graves is BAMF, Slow Burn, Story before the story, The Fic You Didn't Know You Needed To Read, Twenty Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 07:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11504166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sareliz/pseuds/sareliz
Summary: “You know,” Queenie muttered under her breath so no one else could hear. The first wave from the elevator had already all passed them by. “If you could just get yourself a live-in boyfriend, or fiancee or something, it would give the rumor mill less fodder. And it’s only gonna get worse, y’know.”Graves replied in the same sotto voce. “It’s not my fault that I see your sterling qualities and others don’t. You do actively seek to hide them, after all. And I have a newly acquired daughter, and one with a strict moral compass. Who recently compared me to Jesus. The last thing I need right now is a live-in boyfriend.”“You never know. You meet the right guy, you meet the right guy. It’s not like falling in love is convenient."She would know.“Yes, well, I’m going to go out of my way to not meet the right guy, at least for the next decade or so.”Queenie snorted as they walked out of the doors of the Woolworth Building. “Murphy’s Law; you’re going to meet him in the next twenty-four hours. Have fun with that, and say ‘hi’ for me.”Graves laughed.“Goodbye, Queenie,” he said as he trotted down the front steps to the nearest apparition point.





	1. Healing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linusmir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linusmir/gifts).



Percival Graves knew he needed to heal.

He had no illusions about that.

The argument he’d had with Seraphina when he’d woken at Hubble’s had been terse and brief. Well, compared to some of their arguments it was brief.

He'd tendered his resignation. After all, he had failed, utterly and completely, to capture Grindelwald, much less keep him at bay, and instead became his pawn. 

She’d wanted him out, completely, with six months paid leave.  _ Go some place with a warm beach, for Merlin’s sake!  _

But his work was his life. And if was going to stay, there was much to be done. He would do it all, and he would do it right.

They’d negotiated. 

Eight to noon. If he wasn’t out of the building by 12:08 P.M., Sera would make sure that the next thing he touched in the office was a portkey to Cuba, and Customs would be instructed  _ not to let him back in until six months had passed.  _ It was a threat he knew she would make good on. She probably already had the international portkey made.

But it wasn’t all concessions on his part. He’d gotten a few of his own. Tina Goldstein had come to visit before Sera had, after all, and he’d gotten the unvarnished story from her. And she’d been full of opinions.

Given that it would have taken fully four or five hours every day for him to enact this part of his new agenda, it was just as well he'd delegated to Seraphina. Not that he would tell her that.

And the work itself. Rappaport’s Law wasn’t anywhere near to being amended, but MACUSA had just learned an object lesson on the dangers of not paying attention to magical children raised by no-majs, at least hate-filled no-majs. The magical world of America needed a census and a squib registry.

As it was, squibs had full rights in MACUSA, if they were part of a magical family, and it was easy to tell if a person was at least a squib - a potion would work on them. And everyone knew that if two squibs married, they might produce a magical child. 

And if those two squibs know nothing about the magical world, then Ilvermorny isn’t going to be teaching their child. And if those two squibs happen to partake in a particularly repressive subculture within America - and let’s face it, there were plenty of them to choose from - that child might turn into  _ another  _ Obscurial.

And did they really need  _ another one? _

Seraphina had agreed to push for a census and registry, and to push for the amendment of the laws to allow recognized squibs full rights in MACUSA whether or not they were  _ close  _ to their magical family.

And that, Tina and Percival had rightly reasoned, put MACUSA that much closer to amending Rappaport’s Law, no matter that it would take decades to manage, if they couldn’t convince the key lawmakers from the get go.

It was asinine, after all, to imagine that a squib  _ must  _ marry a witch or wizard - or another squib. It was a recognized fact that sometimes squibs felt more comfortable with no-majs. It didn’t make the squib any less in MACUSA’s eyes, even if they were very close with their magical family.

And if a squib could marry a no-maj, why couldn’t a witch? Or a wizard?

The President had narrowed her eyes once Graves had made his position known.

“What’s your stake?” she asked, before she agreed to anything. “Why are you even asking for this?”

Percival had sighed then and rubbed his hands over his eyes. In fact, there was so much he saw clearly that he hadn't before. It was no wonder Sera, his old friend and rival, was asking why. He'd certainly never gotten political before. “I'm not a senator, and I don’t pretend to be one.” He met her eyes then. “My entire adult life so far, I have been dedicated to upholding the laws that others make on my behalf, and I’ve liked it that way. You know I have. But even I can see when a law is unjust, when we take it too far. When it happens this way, like it’s happened here, and people feel the  _ lack of justice,  _ well, I think three things happen. First, it makes criminals of good people. Second, the aurors who have to catch those criminals who are actually just good people, those aurors, their souls get a little more hardened every time they have to do it. Third, to all of those disillusioned people who see the injustice but haven’t yet broken laws, crazy men like Grindelwald start sounding a little more plausible.”

Picquery gave Graves a hard stare at that. He threw up his hands in a dramatic show of innocence.

“Give me a break, Sera. The dirtbag bested me in a duel, killed my house elves, and hid me in my own damn house for six days while he stole my body, demoted or executed anyone he could who questioned him, all the while spreading his insanity in my voice. It’s going to take me  _ months _ to rebuild all the relationships he abused in my name, to say nothing of whatever he undoubtedly made a mess of, administratively. I don’t see Grindelwald doing paperwork, do you? Thank Merlin for clerks. Unless of course he demoted all of them, too. 

“I’m not taking the bastard’s side on anything, Seraphina. But he’s a dark wizard, not an  _ idiot _ . He knows how to play on people’s sympathies, on their pain and their fear. And we are  _ handing  _ him situations on a  _ silver platter.  _

“I’m doing this because I don’t want to go to war again. I’m doing this because if  _ I  _ can see that a law is unjust, then I  _ guarantee you  _ that others can, too. I’m doing this because  _ every Obscurial is a child.  _ A  _ child  _ Seraphina. And this one was right under our noses. Our aurors  _ knew  _ about him. And they could do nothing, because the law tied their hands. I tied their hands. You tied their hands.”

Seraphina was entirely silent.

“What about the next Obscurial?”

Silence.

“Will we have to kill  _ another  _ child before we can get the senators to see reason?”

Silence.

“Which begs the question,  _ how many children will we have to kill before the laws change?” _

Silence.

It was a short argument.

He’d gotten one other concession, too.

“I’m doing it. And I’m telling you ahead of time. I won’t break laws. I want you to grant me permission to do this on a trial basis. Use it as a case study for your argument with the senators.”

She’d agreed, and Graves was quietly relieved. He really didn’t like even the idea of breaking laws, but there had been no guarantee she would agree. And he wasn’t entirely sure what he would have done, then.

He had to stay at Hubble’s for observation for at least another day, but Graves was not idle. He’d sent Goldstein away with a list of things to send back to him, including all of the auror reports from the subway incident and what they were now calling the imposter incident, three owls, two clerks from the wand-permit office who had had no interaction at all with the imposter, a box of writing materials, Newt Scamander’s forwarding address, and her sister, Queenie.

When Queenie arrived, he sent the clerks for coffee and bagels.

“When are you going to come to work for me, Miss Goldstein?”

She smiled her dazzling smile. It wasn’t entirely lost on him, but she wasn’t precisely his type. He just raised an eyebrow.

“I’m no Auror, sir,” she demurred, her accent much thicker than her sister’s. One of the two had obviously changed their accent. Either the elder, to fit in and be more respected, or the younger, to be more easily dismissed. Graves had a guess as to which was true.

He looked her dead in the eye and brought out his trump card, first, marshalling his thoughts.  _ If you had worked for me, this mess with Grindelwald wouldn’t have happened,  _ he thought clearly and directly, right at her.

Tina had owned up as part of her unofficial and unvarnished report: Queenella Doreen Soleil Goldstein was a grade ten natural legilimens. And she served coffee to middle management government workers for a living.

Queenie paled. “You know that ain’t true. He would’a just gotten rid of me, just like he did anyone else who might’a noticed.”

Graves shook his head, idly noting that in addition to her accent, there was her imperfect grammar. It was clear to him now that she used it as an obvious defensive weapon; it was disarming and added to the illusion that she was purely decorative.

Queenie Goldstein was anything but purely decorative.

“Once you come to me, you leaving with anything other than your golden parachute on will be a red flag to the President, I promise you.”

“But I ain’t got the training for any of that stuff. People would just think we was havin’ an affair,” she pointed out, and he silently agreed. That didn’t mean she was going to win this argument, however. And so what if they did think that? It wouldn’t stop him from hiring the best. And Queenie Goldstein was the best.

“Miss Goldstein, you’re quite good at it, without the training. And you could receive what training you need, to fill in the gaps. I  _ need  _ you, Queenie. You’re an invaluable resource sitting just out of reach. It’s maddening,” he said calmly. “What do you want?”

This was not normally the tack he took in negotiations with anyone, but negotiating with a natural legilimens was another kettle of fish.

Queenie took on a thoughtful countenance and was silent for a few moments.

“There’s certain work I don’t wanna do. And there are certain benefits I’d like to have.”

“Name them,” Percival Graves said, slowly and clearly. He would give her whatever was in his power to give.

She detailed the kind of auror work she had no preference for doing - the scut, junior auror things she had undoubtedly had an earful of from her sister.

“You’re wasted on all of that, anyway. And you’ve paid your dues, serving coffee to idiots for years. Next?”

She detailed some predictable things; significant pay, time off, on-call time. And then she hesitated. But she was looking straight into Graves’ eyes.

_ The no-maj.  _

Queenie wasn’t the only legilimens in the room, no matter that she was far beyond him in ability, and apparently, mental training.

The no-maj was clear in her thoughts, to say nothing that her mind was the loudest and most discordant thing he’d ever heard in a life of living in New York City. He could hear reflected in her mind everyone within a given radius, he imagined. And in the hospital, that was quite a number of people, and not many were in a happy state of mind. Still, Graves could see in the center of the storm, memories of a heavy-set mustachioed man in a cheap suit whose heart and soul was intertwined with his would-be assistant. And he was a no-maj.

Graves raised an eyebrow. He waited. And waited.  _ And waited.  _

He could outwait her, he was certain. And he knew that she knew that he knew that.

He was right.

“I want permission to court and marry a no-maj.”

“You know I don’t have that authority. And I can’t condone you breaking existing laws.” 

His tone then became thoughtful. “Laws can change, however. And if you chose to participate in a bit of civil disobedience against a law you find unjust, well, that might just be a seminal case in amending the law, wouldn’t it? And not being an auror, you haven’t taken an oath to uphold the law, like I and your sister have. 

“Of course, that’s just hypothetically speaking. Should you be found out before the law is changed, and your appeal come before the Supreme Court. Of course, the Court might look more benignly if there were children involved, children who deeply loved and respected their no-maj father. Obliviation would be a harder sell, then, I think. After all, you’d just be walking in the footsteps of Isolt, and don’t we all want to do that?” Graves ended with a charming smile of his own.

Queenie was biting her lip, and not repressing her smile very effectively. “I’ll take that under advisement, sir.”

“I fully expect to be the godfather to one of your children. What’s your beau like?”

Queenie did not hide her confusion, though she was still quite obviously happy.

“I, of course, render no judgment on whether or not he’s a no-maj. I naturally assume he isn’t, because that is what is lawful. I imagine you have several young men vying for your attention, and I have no intention of testing any of them to see if they might possibly  _ be _ a no-maj. That would be terribly rude. For all I know, your request for that very odd benefit was a test to see if I was willing to break the law, and in no way an indication of your intentions to do any such thing. You see my position?” he asked, smiling a small smile of his own.

“Perfectly. I think I’m gonna like working for you, sir,” she said, smiling once more. And then she went on to describe this  _ Jacob _ in fulsome detail as she perched informally on the edge of Graves’ bed. A friend of Newt Scamander, a baker, a thoroughly decent human being. Only partly oblivated, maybe, because diluted Swooping Evil venom only gets rid of recent  _ bad  _ memories, so even though he was caught in the rain, he probably wouldn’t have forgotten everything.

Graves let her go on for a bit, charmed by her calming presence, so generally guileless, so charitable, so very different from his last conscious week of mayhem, murder, and misery.

Grindelwald hadn’t tortured him. He hadn’t given him a second thought after getting what he wanted. His basic needs were met by one of the dark wizard’s own house elves. But he had spent six days of utter powerlessness and misery, his imagination on fire with the horrific possibilities of what havok Grindelwald could wreak in his name.

It turned out, the dark wizard had recognized the signs of the Obscurial, halfway around the world, when all of MACUSA remained oblivious. Including Graves himself.

“Don’t,” Miss Goldstein the younger said, changing her tone and apparently her subject. “Beatin’ yourself up never does any good.”

He nodded, his errant thoughts trailing off in other directions.

“I like that idea, though. If you need any help with it, let me know. I am your assistant, now.”

Graves raised an eyebrow. He had intended it to be an entirely personal matter.

“Yeah, but you ain’t got any house elves right now. How you gonna feed that poor child? You thought’a that? Nah, I didn’t think so.”

Graves snorted and laughed a bit, for the first time in too long. “We’ll deal with that tomorrow. Your transfer will be effective tomorrow morning, and I’ll send the contract over for you to sign as soon as it’s ready. And I want tasty baked goods, as soon as you’ve reminded your fellow of how much he adores you.”

Queenie’s laugh was a breath of fresh air. “I’m no slouch myself! You can have ‘em before that!”

Graves smiled. “Get out of here, and send my clerks back in. I’ll have a list of things for you to do in the morning.”

“You got it, Mr. Graves.”

* * *

> _ December 13, 1926 _
> 
>  
> 
> _ Ministry of Magic _
> 
> _ London, Britain _
> 
> _ Dear Mr. Scamander, _
> 
> _ Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Percival Lancelot Archimedes Graves and I am the Director of Magical Security for MACUSA. I understand from various reports, as well as Senior Auror Tina Goldstein, that while in our country on a mission of mercy, you recently apprehended Gellert Grindelwald. I cannot thank you enough, and I look forward to attempting it in person. _
> 
> _ I am well and whole after my imprisonment, and am eager to attend to many things. One of them is to make as certain as possible that no magical child becomes an Obscurial in America again. As you are undoubtedly the world’s leading expert on the topic of obscurii and Obscurials, I beg you to tell me everything you know to be true, your experiences in the matter, and whatever hypotheses you may have, however vague and unsubstantiated. _
> 
> _ I go tomorrow to test and possibly adopt a child who has a strong potential, if magical, of becoming an Obscurial. I beg you to reply as soon as you possibly can, at length, and have included an International Reply Coupon to that effect. _
> 
> _ Please also inform me of your ability and willingness to consult in person, should the need arise. In such circumstances, time would be of the essence, and I would necessarily communicate directly with your Ministry to alert you, and an International Portkey would be supplied to you for your round-trip use. On the basis of hope alone and anticipating your positive response, I will order a set made. You can expect their delivery shortly after this letter. _
> 
> _ With effusive thanks, _
> 
> _ Percival Graves _
> 
>  
> 
> _ Until December 14 at the Mildred Hubble Hospital, etc, New York City _
> 
> _ December 15 on at The Graves Manse, Long Island, New York _

* * *

He’d originally intended to do the footwork of resurrecting the shambles of his life on his own, but as he’d been taken hostage because of his job, he’d received permission to use staff time to reassemble the pieces of his shattered domestic sphere. It was just as well. Regardless of the fact that he would only be on the clock for four hours a day, he really didn’t want his focus to waver in those four hours.

So Queenie picked up the new wardrobe he’d ordered because he categorically refused to wear anything Grindelwald might have worn. He had a similar distaste for the pajamas he’d worn for nearly a week straight. They would all be vanished into nothingness, and Graves thought the expense was well worth his healing.

And when Seraphina gifted him with one of her house elves, a young male named Nips, it was Queenie who went and got him settled in and attuned him to the temporary wards the Aurors had put around his residence.

And it was Queenie who had brought him the six flasks of pepper-up and a new suit, complete with boots, overcoat and scarf. True, it looked exactly like his old ones, but Percival knew the difference.

When he was finally discharged in the afternoon of his third day of consciousness, he and Queenie went to an address she had an auror find on his behalf.

Thus they knocked on the door of the Sacred Heart Orphanage.

It had been more than a week since the subway incident, and Graves didn’t think she would have been adopted so quickly. His information indicated she hadn’t, but it was half a day old, and much could occur in twelve hours.

Graves put a look of gentle inquiry on his face. It wouldn’t do to look too overtly charming at first. Still, it didn’t hurt that he had a beautiful woman on his arm. He had put a Notice Me Not charm specifically over their ring fingers. Just because he didn’t break laws, didn’t mean he wasn’t up for a bit of lying, particularly to no-majs.

“Good afternoon,” he said to the woman who opened the door. “We’re interested in adopting one of your orphans. May we come in and speak to the matron?”

The matron was exceptionally accommodating, particularly when Graves made it clear that he was interested in making a donation to the running of the orphanage, regardless of whether or not the orphan and he seemed to suit. Graves pointedly ignored the woman’s negativity, and he and Queenie waited patiently in a reasonably comfortable salon.

It was a matter of some small cajoling for Graves and Goldstein to be able to interview the child alone. In fact, Graves had to make his donation early. Five crisp fifty dollar bills seemed to put the woman in a sufficient mood to leave them unchaperoned.

Modesty Barebone was a child that seemed to match her name. Especially if she happened to have a middle name to the tune of ‘Depressing’. Graves wondered what her name had been, before Miss Mary Lou Barebone gave her the present one.

Before he could launch into his opening salvo, Queenie bent down and introduced herself. Very likely, Percival considered, she hadn’t liked what he was going to say first. 

He’d planned on being rather straightforward. ‘Hello, the Matron gave me this for you. You should drink it,’ while handing her one of his flasks of Pepper-Up seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to open the interview, which might be one sided and incredibly short, ending in obliviation for one of the party whose last name did not begin with a G, if somebody’s ears didn’t start steaming.

“Hi, sweetie! My name’s Queenie. What’s yours?” Queenie had crouched down so that she was eye-level with the child.

“I’m Modesty. Are you gonna adopt me?”

The child looked bleak, and not terribly excited at the prospect. Then again, she didn’t look capable of being excited at any prospect.

“Maybe. We’re lookin’ for a little girl that’s related to us. We heard there might be one in this orphanage. We heard it might be you.”

The child seemed to take this in, and Graves’ estimation of Queenie was on the rise. She was a natural at the good-cop portion of the interview. Graves himself was quite good at playing whatever side was necessary in the moment. Still, he focused in on the child’s response.

“How can you tell?” the child queried. “You got a picture or something? ‘Cause I don’t think I look like you. Or him,” she said, nodding over to Percival.

“Well, we got a easy little test for ya. Everyone in our family has a funny reaction to this one drink we have. Kind of like an allergic reaction,  you know? But less annoying. And if you’re not part of our family, you won’t have that funny reaction.”

“What’s the funny reaction?” asked the most deadpan child on the east coast.

Queenie leaned closer, grinning. She whispered her response, though Graves could hear her clearly enough. “It tastes like pepper, and it makes steam come outta ya ears.”

Modesty giggled, opening up.

“I know, pretty funny, right?” Queenie said, still grinning. “It also gives you a bit of pep when you’re feeling tired. So we’d only give you a sip. Don’t want you to be bouncing off the walls.”

Modesty continued to giggle.

“So, ya wanna take a sip for us? See if ya ears steam up?”

Modesty stopped giggling. “What if I’m not related to you?”

“Then it won’t taste like pepper, it won’t give ya a pep, and no steam will come outta anybody’s ears.”

“And you won’t adopt me,” Modesty replied, and Graves noted that she seemed upset about it. What a difference bonding with Queenie had made.

“I’m sorry sweetie. Mr. Graves isn’t allowed to adopt you if you’re not related to us.”

Modesty looked suddenly thoughtful, and turned her somber gaze on him. “Are you Credence’s friend? His real name was Adam, you know. He didn’t like ‘Credence’ any more than I like ‘Modesty’.”

Percival hadn’t expected this to come up so quickly, but he was ready. He, too, crouched down and put his elbows on his thighs. “Yes. I wanted to become friends with Credence. I thought he might have been related to us, too, and he seemed like a nice young man.”

“He killed Ma Barebone, you know.”

Percival nodded slowly. “I know. I don’t blame him, though.”

“Me neither. Ma Barebone wasn’t very nice. She taught us lots about witches and sin and hell and liquor, but Credence said once that she wouldn’t recognize true charity if it were a snake about to bite her. Credence has read the Bible lots of times, and we used to talk about all the parts Ma Barebone never mentioned. Like King David, and Deborah the Judge, and Jesus of Nazareth. And the Tent-Peg Lady. I like her, but I can’t remember her name. Credence liked to read the Bible to me. It was one of the few things that Ma Barebone wouldn’t beat him for doing. She said she was trying to beat the Devil out of him, but I don’t think it worked. And none of us were allowed to beat the Devil out of her, not even Chastity. But she’s dead, too, so I don’t guess it matters much. It’s in God’s hands, now,” the little sage said, ending her speech.

Queenie put her hand out to Percival for the flask and he handed it over in silence. She unstoppered the top and held it between herself and the child. 

“You ready to try a sip?”

Modesty looked nervous. “What if it doesn’t work, even if I  _ am  _ related to you?”

“How ‘bout I take a sip first, just to make sure it works, huh? And you can see steam come outta my ears,” Queenie said, grinning a conspiratorial grin once more.

Modesty nodded.

Queenie took the requisite sip, shivered, smacked her lips together, and sure enough, steam came out of her ears.

Modesty smiled and almost laughed, but all humor ended when she took the flask from Goldstein’s hand.

She took a full gulp - no mincing sip, here - then pulled a face at the taste, simultaneously handing back the flask.

And steam came out of her ears.

“Aw, baby! You’re one of us!” Queenie said with a happy squeal and pulled Modesty in for a hug.

And Modesty smiled.

* * *

The matron entered the room again with a large ledger. Modesty had already fetched her meager belongings with all the pep one would expect from drinking two ounces of pepper-up, and said belongings seemed to consist of a medium sized box and a largish book bound in leather. Her overcoat, which she came back wearing, was as disgraceful as Graves had imagined it might be.

The matron took down all of Graves’ pertinent information. She started to assure him that all of the records were kept private, but he stopped her.

“Quite the contrary, madam. If anyone should come looking for Modesty for any reason, please do direct them to me. I would be pleased to talk with them, and should Modesty wish it at the time, she may as well.”

The matron looked surprised, and Graves imagined many adoptive parents wished a clean start for their new children. This was, of course, not the case for him.

“Well, and you’ll be wanting to give her a new name, I’m thinking,” the matron said. “They always do.”

Graves turned to Modesty, seated on a threadbare couch next to Queenie. “Would you prefer to take my last name, Graves, or retain Barebone?”

Modesty pulled a face, sticking her tongue out. “Graves, please.”

Percival smiled, a small quirk of one side of his lips. “Graves it is. And your first name? You said you didn’t like Modesty. What would you prefer?”

Modesty - or whomever she decided to be from here on out - took some time to consider the question, biting the bottom of her lip and worrying it as she pondered the issue.

“Come on, girl, we don’t have all day!” the matron snapped.

Graves countered in a soothing tone. “This is your name, Modesty. Take all the time you need.”

“I gotta look something up,” she said suddenly, opening the leather-bound tome on her lap and muttering to herself. “Judges, Judges, Judges, where is she…” she whispered to herself. Finally, she triumphantly jabbed a finger at the book. “Jael. Can I be Jael? J-A-E-L?”

The matron snorted in apparent disapproval at the same moment Queenie put her arm around the child’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. 

“Sure, sweetie. That’s a nice name,” Goldstein assured her.

“It’s perfect,” Graves chimed in. “Do you want a middle name? Or two?”

The child formerly known as Modesty, but now Jael - which would take a bit of getting used to, Graves realized, as he had already mentally categorized her as ‘Modesty’, regardless of her last name - considered this question, too. Eventually, she spoke. “I think I’d like two. Modesty and Alice. My old names. Just in case someone comes looking for me, they can call me that, too.”

“That’s a good idea,” Queenie assured her, again.

Graves just smiled at her eight year old logic.

The matron snorted again and said her full name out loud. “Jael Modesty Alice Graves.” Then she looked at Graves. “Sign here… and she’s yours now. One of our inspectors will come ‘round in a week or two to see how you’re getting on, but then we’ll let you be.”

Graves was internally disgusted by how easy it was to obtain a child in the no-maj world, even playing by the rules. Dress up, fork over the cash, put on a little charm, and you now have a child. The thought was chilling, but he shrugged it off as best he could.

He shook the matron’s hand and Queenie did as well. Modesty - or, really, Jael - had already said her goodbyes to the other children when she’d fetched her belongings, and needed only to say goodbye and thank you to the matron before they were shown out the door once more.

Queenie was carrying the box and the book, and her other hand was held tightly in Jael’s as they walked down the front steps of the orphanage. When they got out onto the street, Graves was surprised to feel a cold little hand against his palm. He looked at it in shock for a brief moment before gripping it lightly. But he didn’t like it. It was his right hand, his wand hand, and the hand with which he had greater proficiency for wandless magic. If something should happen...

“Baby,” Queenie addressed to Jael. “I like to be on the other side. Let’s switch, Mr. Graves.”

In a flash Graves and Queenie had switched places around the child formerly known as Modesty, and Graves was sending his silent thank yous to his new Legilimens. And his right hand was now free.

“You guys married? You act like you’re married.”

“Nah, honey,” Queenie said. “Mr. Graves is my boss. Me and my sister, we both work for him, y’know?”

“Tell me about your new name, Jael,” Graves said, changing the subject. “Where is it from?”

“It’s from the book of Judges, in the Bible. You remember the story?”

Both Graves and Goldstein shook their heads.

“Well, there’s this big war, and the evil general Sisera, he’s about to be beaten by God’s people, but he runs away like a coward. And he seeks shelter with this neutral family, but the wife, she’s not neutral. She’s one of God’s chosen. So when Sisera is asleep in her tent, she grabs a tent peg and a hammer and drives it right through his head. Bam. So hard it’s stuck to the ground. That’s Jael. The Tent Peg Lady. And I wanna be just like her.”

Graves and Goldstein shot each other worried looks over the oblivious and newly dubbed Jael, even as Queenie made soothing and interested sounds.

_ Let’s take this very carefully, Queenie,  _ Graves quite deliberately thought. _ And if you don’t know already, I’m also a legilimens, though a more mundane one than you. I’ll need to be looking in your eyes for it to work, and if you don’t mind, I’ll be doing a bit of that as we gently tell this child her heritage. _

Queenie tossed him a smile and a raised eyebrow.

_ Let’s duck into the first likely looking cafe we can. Once our food arrives I’ll do a wandless notice me not and a few minor wards to make sure we’re not bothered. _

“What should I call you?” Jael Modesty Alice asked, looking up at Graves and knocking him out of his thoughts.

“What do you want to call me?” he countered, the enormity of the fact that he had just adopted a magical child beginning to dawn on him.

“Dunno. I had two mas. I miss the first. I don’t miss the second so much. I had a pa once. He didn’t much mind us kids, but he sure liked my first ma. You gonna be my pa?”

“I suppose I am, now, though I don’t much care for the term ‘pa’.”

“Can I be Aunt Queenie?” Goldstein the Younger piped up happily.

It made Graves snort. “Yes,” he conceded, recognizing already that their lives were going to be rather more entwined than his ever had been with an employee, particularly if he did become godfather to her firstborn.  _ Which I fully expect to be,  _ he pointed out with purposeful clarity in his mind.

“So, you’re Father Graves, then,” Jael said, gravely.

“Oh, that’s dreadful,” Queenie said, giving voice to both of their thoughts.

“My first name is Percival. Why don’t you call me Percival, and I’ll call you Jael?”

“Percival. Percival.  _ Percival _ ,” the little girl said, rolling the name around her tongue. “Percival. I never had a Percival before.”

“I’ve never had a Jael before,” he pointed out gamely.

“Where do you live, Percival? Here in the city somewhere?” Jael asked.

“I have a house in Long Island. We’ll go there after we eat, and maybe do some shopping for you.”

“For me? What do I need?”

“Oh, I can think of a thing or two,” Queenie said enthusiastically.

“Likewise. You have a new name. Perhaps you should have some new dresses. Do you like to read?”

“Oh, yes, sir. But Ma Barebone only let me read the one book,” Jael said, motioning her head to the large tome that Queenie bore.

“I have a library, but it may be too dull for you. We’ll get you some books you might like.”

“Nothing’s dull like Numbers, sir. I’m sure I’ll like your books just fine, even if I don’t understand everything in them. Can I ask you about them? If I get confused? Like I would with Credence?”

“Of course, my dear,” Graves said, the endearment slipping out without his knowledge or permission. He caught Queenie’s smirk, but pointedly disregarded it.

“You like cats, honey?” Queenie asked, changing the subject.

“Witches have cats. And toads. And owls. And newts. But I think they put  _ them _ in their stew. I don’t think I’d like to have a stew with newts in it, would you?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it dinner, honey,” Queenie equivocated with a definitive air. “So ya don’t like cats?”

“Well… I’ve never gotten to really see one. Not up close. But I think I might. Ma Barebone would have beat it to death and put it in a stew, though.”

“Huh,” Queenie said, apparently stymied.

“Do you think Ma Barebone was always right?” Graves asked, innocently.

“I reckon she couldn’t have been. Because she beat Credence an awful lot, even for stuff he didn’t do. So if she was wrong about that, she might’a been wrong ‘bout lots of things. Sometimes I use’ta think she was wrong about most everything. And just because she quoted the Bible, well, the Devil can quote the Bible. He did it right there with the temptation in the wilderness.” Jael continued on in a quieter voice. “Sometimes, I use’ta think that maybe Ma Barebone was the Devil.” She continued on a bit stronger. “And how’d she know so much about witches, anyways? I bet she never met a witch in her life. S’not like a witch would come up to her and shake her hand and say, ‘How’de’do, I’m a witch, and you’ve got your facts wrong.’”

Queenie laughed and Graves was smiling broadly. Life with Jael was undoubtedly going to be interesting. And for good measure, he cast a wandless notice me not over the three of them and a silent variant of the muffliato.

“You know,” Queenie responded. “I bet you that never did happen, not once.”

“I think I’d like to meet a witch,” Jael mused quietly. “Think she might take me for a ride on her broomstick?”

“I think if you asked nicely, she probably would. Or maybe he would, if you met a wizard.”

“You mean boys can’t be witches?”

“I think they might prefer the term ‘wizard’. If you ever meet one, you can ask,” Queenie replied.

“You don’t think it would be impre-impertinent?” Jael asked, stumbling over the last word, but eventually pronouncing it correctly.

Queenie silently shook her head.

“You think witches go to hell, Aunt Queenie?”

“Nah. I think God loves everybody just the way they are. If you’re born a witch, you’re born a witch. So what?”

“What about you, Percival? Do you think witches go to hell?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I think that whether a person has magic or not isn’t what decides what happens after they die. I think maybe that depends on something else.”

“Like if they’re a good person and love Jesus?”

“That’s one idea, yes,” he replied. “So there might be good witches and bad witches.”

Jael shivered. “I wouldn’t like to walk down a dark alley with a bad witch.”

“Nah, don’t worry about that, sweet pea,” Queenie reassured her. “If witches exist, then by golly they’d have police witches, too. And they’d put the bad ones on trial, and then put them in jail, just like people without magic, you know?”

“Police witches,” Jael said, with wonder in her voice. “Wowee. I’d sure like to meet me a police witch. Think she goes out on patrol with her broomstick?”

Graves couldn’t keep the laughter in at her childish wonder. It was some time since he’d experienced anything like it.

“When I was a little boy,” he confided, “I wanted more than anything to be a police wizard when I grew up.”

Jael gasped, a big grin on her face. “And did you? You’re old now, have you been a police wizard?”

Graves looked down at her and smiled, and silently nodded.

Jael started jumping up and down with glee as she walked. “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Are you a real wizard? Like a really real wizard?” she asked, still jumping, but somehow managing to look up at Percival.

Graves continued to smile, and nodded once sharply.

The child looked over at the tall, elegant woman holding her hand and asked in a tone of joy and wonder, “Aunt Queenie, are you a  _ witch _ ?”

“Sure am, sweet pea. Not goin’ to hell, neither. God loves me sure as God loves you.”

The girl squealed in happiness as she bounced up and down between them as they continued to walk down the street. Graves wondered if it could be a delayed effect of the pepper-up. It was possible.

“Percival-Percival-Percival!  _ Will you take me riding on your broomstick?!?! Please-please-please?” _

Percival Graves found himself laughing almost uncontrollably, her excitement was so contagious. He nodded and smiled and managed to get out a yes in between guffaws. The difference between Jael holding his hand presently and Modesty cautiously walking into the salon in the orphanage was night and day.

Jael started skipping as she walked, chanting, “I’m gonna ride on a  _ broom _ stick!” over and over again.

“When we go into the cafe, we’ll have to stop talking about magic for just a little while, Jael. Just long enough so I drop the charms that have kept everyone from noticing us now. We have to let the waitress notice us, after all,” Graves said in a patient tone, still smiling.

Jael nodded eagerly, still skipping and humming her ‘I’m gonna ride on a  _ broom _ stick’ tune. “Yes, sir. We gotta keep it a secret, huh?”

“Exactly, sweetheart,” Queenie replied.

“So how come you told me? Am I special?”

“You sure are, honey! You’re one of us.”

Jael gasped again. “Am I a witch? A real witch?”

“We’re not sure, yet,” Graves responded. “We know you’re from a family with at least one witch or wizard in it. You’ve got magic in your blood. But we don’t know how much, yet.”

Jael kept skipping along between them. “I think Credence was a wizard. But I don’t think he knew. I think maybe Ma Barebone knew, and that’s why she beat him so much. She did  _ not  _ like the idea of witches, no siree. She thought they was all called witches, she didn’t know about wizards,” Jael said as an aside, before talking about Credence again. “He’d take whippings for me, too, but I didn’t like it when he did. That’s why he killed Ma Barebone, you know. It was ‘cause he’d found the magic wand I’d made, and she found us, and then she was gonna whip him, but that wasn’t right. So I said it was mine. ‘Cause it was. And she was looking like she was going to whip me. You ever been whipped with a belt?” Jael stopped skipping, then. “Hurts lots more than with just a hand. Lots more. I been whipped with both. But that time, when Ma Barebone died, she didn’t touch the belt again. It moved across the floor, away from her, like with magic. And then, and then Credence protected me like he always did. And there was this black smoke, and Credence became the black smoke, and it attacked Ma Barebone, like she always attacked him. And then she was floating. And then she was dead. And then he crashed through the wall and ceiling. That’s how his twin, Chastity, died. She got hit with a big rock. But no rocks hit me. ‘Cause Credence wouldn’t hurt me. He was always protecting me.” She started skipping again. “I miss Credence. You think he’ll be able to find me in Long Island?”

_ Do not tell her he’s dead. Now is not the time,  _ Graves thought immediately.

“Sure, honey. That’s why Mr. Graves told the matron that anyone could know where he lives. Just in case someone, like Credence, comes lookin’ for ya.”

“I miss Credence,” she said again, as Graves nodded toward a likely looking cafe on the edge of a more upscale neighborhood, and he and Queenie angled toward it. “I sure hope he’s gonna find me, soon. I been praying every night and every morning that he’s okay.”

“You keep praying, sweetie,” Queenie said.

“Here we are,” Graves said, changing the subject. “Are you hungry, little one?”

“I’m  _ always  _ hungry,” she assured them both.

“Not anymore, sweetie. We’re gonna feed you up right.”

Graves cancelled the charms and they were noticed well enough to be seated. Once they’d gotten settled and ordered, the conversation began to flow once more.

“What else are ya gonna buy me?” Jael asked, happily.

“Dresses, shoes, boots, a coat. Night clothes. Underthings. Some sporting clothes, perhaps. We’ll introduce you to a game you might enjoy. A little bag. Books. I miss anything?” Graves asked, looking over to Queenie.

“A new haircut, maybe,” she posited.

“And a cat?” Jael asked, grinning and looking hopeful.

Graves smirked at her. “Maybe.”

“You like cats, Mr. Graves?” Queenie asked, and looking in her eyes, he realized that she regretted bringing cats up just a bit, not knowing if she’d accidentally opened a can of worms he wouldn’t want to deal with.

He sighed. “Call me Percival outside of the office, Queenie. And yes, I like cats.”

“You already got a cat?” Jael asked, her eyes all lit up.

“Well, not exactly,” Graves equivocated, and knew that Queenie would see why.

Queenie gasped. “No way!”

Graves gave her a quelling look.  _ Hush. Not now. _

“He’ll tell us after the food comes. But I think you’re going to love it. I do!” she said, ending on a quiet squeal of her own. Yes, and Seraphina had the same response. After which she’d laughed long and loud. 

The President had an entirely useful animagus form: a seagull. Percival Graves was not so lucky, which was a damn shame considering how long it had taken for the damn electrical storm. It had taken Seraphina six weeks to become an animagus. It had taken Percival over two years.

And then he’d changed into a Wampus Cat. Which was an admittedly regal and fantastic beast, regardless of how illegal they were. It was also  _ not small _ . And being a large, illegal, magical creature, his form was not remotely useful in his work as an auror. Oh, what he would have given to have turned into a rat, or a pigeon. Or a cockroach. A cockroach would have been a damn sight more useful for undercover work than a large magical panther.

Graves resigned himself to eventually being cooed over and was man enough to admit that he really enjoyed being scratched and rubbed behind his ears in his animagus form. All cats were hedonistic, and he no less than any other.

The rest of the meal went just as well as the walk had, and Graves had never seen a child so excited to enter the wizarding quarter to buy clothes.

The clothes were first, and the measurements took some time, but were worth it, and would be ready for pick up in two hours and twenty-three minutes. Graves ducked out ever-so-briefly to send a few owls, one to Nips to let him know there would be four for dinner, and to prepare a room for Jael. Another owl went to Tina Goldstein to invite her over for dinner. 

Graves hadn’t yet been back to his home - desecrated and violated as it had been. Nips had had time and instruction to scourge clean all the places Grindelwald had likely been, but in truth, Graves was grateful that he wouldn’t be returning to his family’s manse alone. Especially with the house elves he’d grown up with, murdered. They’d been the source of most of the joy and love he’d had in his life.

Graves had to take several deep breaths to calm himself as the waves of grief and rage washed over him as he stood in the owlery, hands shaking ever-so-slightly.

He was very, very grateful not to go home alone.

Once he returned to his new assistant and his new daughter, the books were next. Then they went to the quidditch supply shop. Graves was either going to be purchasing a tandem broom, or a racing broom with a removable governor spell. It really all depended.

Ready and willing, with Graves, Queenie, and the shopkeeper looking on, Jael put her hand out over a racing broom that was laid with care on the floor before her. She took several deep breaths and, glaring at the broom with a ferocity that would be humorous if she weren’t being so serious about it, barked out, “ **_UP!_ ** ”

The broom handle smacked into her hand as the broom hovered impatiently before them.

Jael, still gripping the handle, was bouncing and chanting, “I get to have a broomstick!” over and over again.

It wouldn’t be right to tell her yet, but it was beginning to look like Jael Modesty Alice Graves, ward, daughter, and soon to be heir of Percival Lancelot Archimedes Graves was a witch, after all.

* * *

Jael clutched her new kneazle kitten to her chest - it was a silver and bronze tiger kitten- while a little leather clutch with an undetectable extension charm and an anti-theft charm dangled from her arm. She firmly declared that the kitten would be named Crab Apple.

“Crab Apple,” Queenie repeated. “I like it.”

Most of the purchases had been miniaturized and placed in Graves’ coat pocket. Jael was wearing her new Every Day Dress, and her new boots and overcoat (and scarf), and Queenie was carrying her new broom, as brooms miniaturized before they were two and two thirds years old tended to malfunction early and often. The rest of the books, clothes, toiletry items, as well as Jael’s box and tome resided safely in an interior and theft-proof pocket of Grave’s overcoat. 

Graves looked at Queenie who had a hand on Jael’s shoulder. “I’ll be back in two minutes. I need to reset the wards so we can Floo in.”  _ And if I’m not back in seven, go to MACUSA and tell the President, ‘The Eagle Lost His Key.’ Start counting now. _

Percival Graves apparated deep into the back garden of the Graves Manse. Specifically, the far northwest corner, underneath the weeping cherry, in the one square foot of space where anyone could apparate in, provided that they were related to him. Or, unfortunately, using Polyjuice.

Then he shifted into his much faster animagus form and took off sprinting.

He was soon within the inner wards and stopped dead, shifting back, calling to Nips and beginning to do the necessary spellcasting.

“Yes, Master?” the young house elf asked, popping into existence at his right hand.

His words came out in a tidy rush. “We’ll be flooing in presently, and expecting another for dinner. I’ll do a full readjustment of the wards when everyone is present, as well as introductions.” He paused to bend down and put his left hand on top of Nips’s head. “I’m glad you’re here.” He paused once more to let that sink in. “Now, must dash. See you inside in a moment.”

And then Graves disapparated on the spot, and strode back into the wizarding cafe he had left Queenie and his daughter in. It was, as he counted it, one hundred and seventeen seconds later. Approximately.

“-that is a harder way to travel, but most adult witches and wizards can do it.” Queenie was explaining.

“And now we’re going to introduce you to another way to travel, through certain magical fireplaces,” Graves said smoothly, walking up to the two of them. “The very first time can be tricky, so you hold tight to Crab Apple, and I’ll hold tight to you, okay?”

Jael nodded and reached a hand up to him, but Graves shook his head.

“I mean to pick you up and carry you through. Is that okay with you?” he asked.

“Never been picked up before.”

“Well, first time for everything,” Graves said gamely, not for the first time wondering if the only love and affection Jael ever received was from her foster brother.

He reached down and hoisted her up, picking her up underneath her armpits. Holding her on his left side, she just dangled awkwardly.

“Wrap your legs around my waist the best you can,” he instructed, and Queenie came up from behind, pulling her dress minutely this way and that to make it easier for her. Soon enough he had her settled in, and held her with his left arm wrapped around, his right arm and right side completely free.

“How’s Crab Apple?” Percival inquired.

“He’s good,” Jael replied.

“How’s Jael?” he pressed.

“She’s good, too,” she replied with a grin.

“So, here’s how this works. You approach a fireplace that you know is connected to your destination. You grab a little handful of floo powder, which is usually stored in a small container on the mantel. It’s that one, there,” he pointed out. “Then you toss the powder into the flames and immediately call out the name of your destination. You have to be very specific about the address. Each fireplace has a different name. So you can’t just say ‘home’. The fireplace in  _ your _ home is called ‘Graves Manse Long Island’.” He paused here. “Where do you live?”

“Graves Manse Long Island,” Jael parroted back.

“If someone asked you, ‘Jael Graves, where do you live?’ what would you tell them?” he asked again.

“Graves Manse Long Island,” Jael said, grinning.

“If Aunt Queenie forgets where you live, what will you tell her?” he asked one more time, knowing that repetition is key.

“Graves Manse Long Island,” Jael said, giggling.

“Very good. Manse is an old fashioned word for house, and the name of our house is the Graves Manse. So once you’ve tossed in the powder, called out the address, you immediately step into the flames and keep walking.”

Jael’s eyes grew wide and her face was an open book of her horror.

“Yes. That’s why it’s a little daunting the first time, and why I’m carrying you. Then you walk out of the fireplace on the other side, dust yourself off and move on with your day. Are you ready?”

Jael shook her head, and Graves smiled at her. 

“Just this once, why don’t you close your eyes, then, hmm?”

Instantly she pressed them tightly shut and buried her head against his shoulder, cocooning Crab Apple.

Graves approached the fireplace and grabbed the floo powder. He didn’t think twice about tossing it in and firmly stating “Graves Manse Long Island”. Nor did he think twice about walking into the fireplace while he pulled out his wand.

He did not duck and roll, but only because he was carrying a small child. He did crouch and spin and cast a wordless homnium revelio, but the great hall was empty of all save Nips. He cast three scourgifies in quick succession as Queenie walked through, pulling her wand and cleaning herself off.

Graves closed the floo for all but calls. Goldstein the Elder would call before she came, and he or Nips would open it then.

“You can open your eyes now, Jael. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

He heard her gasp as Nips came closer, and her legs tightened around his waist. So it was going to be like that, then.

Nips stopped right before him, silent but frozen at the depth of his bow.

Percival Graves quietly knelt down and sat back on his heels, not easy to do in a long overcoat, nor while carrying an eight year old on his left hip, but it was just manageable.

“Nips, this is my adopted daughter, Jael Modesty Alice Graves. Jael, this is my new house elf, Nips.”

“Nips is very happy to meet Miss Jael Modesty Alice. Nips hopes Miss Jael Modesty Alice will be very happy at Graves Manse.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Jael said in the tiniest voice he had yet heard.

Time for a learning moment.

“Jael, I know that Nips is the very first house elf you’ve ever met,” he said this more for Nips than Jael, “but house elves are very precious. They help us and they serve us, but they are also a part of our family. The most important lesson a house elf can teach a witch or wizard is kindness.”

Nips and Jael both looked at Graves askance.

“When a witch or wizard is kind to a house elf, they will be kind in return - to themselves and to everyone else. But when a witch or wizard is  _ not  _ kind to a house elf, the house elf will still be kind to the witch or wizard. But they won’t be kind to themselves. And it is a terrible thing to see, to watch a house elf punish himself for your own unkindness. House elves teach us the importance of being kind to everyone we meet. With house elves, we see the effects clearly before us, but with everyone else, the effects are hidden, but still present. 

“Jael, are you willing to learn how to be truly kind to others, starting with Nips?”

She nodded, and Graves noticed out of the corner of his eye that large tears were rolling down Nips’ face. “Yes, Percival. I’m willing.”

He looked to the young house elf, who was unsuccessfully trying to sniff away tears. “Nips, will you help Jael learn how to be a truly kind and compassionate witch?”

“Oh, yes, Master! Yes, indeed, Master! Nips is honored-” but the elf broke off, his voice cracking at the depth of his most profound bow yet. He stayed there, looking down at his own bare toes.

Graves put his wand away and reached out to put a hand gently on the bare head of the elf. “Rise, Nips. We will discuss all manner of thing later, once our guests are gone. Now I must introduce you to our first guest of the evening.”

Percival loosened his grip on Jael. “Down you go,” he said softly to her.

Jael unwrapped herself and stood on her own, still clutching her kitten to her chest, who was too busy being adorable and snuggling into her coat to notice being anywhere interesting yet.

“Nips, you’ve already met Queenie Goldstein, my assistant. What you don’t already know is that she will have complete access to Graves Manse at any time she requires it, no matter what. Please consider any requests she makes as if they were to come from me. If I am unavailable or incapacitated, you must look to her for guidance until such time as Jael is a grown woman.”

“Nice to see ya, Mr. Nips,” Queenie said, doing a slight curtsey that surprised Percival.

Nips bowed again, quite deeply, but stood back up after. “Nips is honored to serve the Graves family and their designates. You are very welcome to the Manse, Mistress Goldstein.”

“Thank you,” Queenie replied, and then immediately afterwards, the chime above the fireplace sounded its trilling tri-tone.

“Hallooo! Anybody home?” said the floating head of Senior Auror Tina Goldstein from the middle of the now-green flames.

“Wowee,” Jael breathed softly.

Nips scurried over quickly to answer the call. Meanwhile Graves stood and walked the few feet to stand by his Legilimens. 

“I didn’t know you felt that way about house elves,” she said quietly.

Graves turned his head just slightly, raised one eyebrow and pointed out the obvious. “You don’t see everything, Queenie Goldstein.”

Queenie snorted delicately as her sister walked into the room, covered in soot. “I know that better than most, Percival Graves,” she responded just as softly.

* * *

“ _ Please-please-please!?!?” _

“Please?” Queenie added, looking not quite as hopeful as Jael, but still reasonably excited.

“What are we begging for?” Goldstein the Elder asked.

“Mr. Graves has a very impressive animagus form. It has to be seen to be believed.”

Tina Goldstein turned a sceptical gaze on him. “What, is he a dragon?”

Graves sighed. There was no reasonable avenue of escape. Instead, he gave in, wondering if that was going to be the beginning of a trend with Jael.

“HOLY SHI--”

“Oh, sweet Merlin’s garters, you’re huge!”

“Oh my gosh you have six legs!  _ You have six legs! Can I ride you like a pony?!?!” _

“Merrrow,” Crab Apple added, which seemed to very clearly mean, ‘Oh, I like you better this way.’

“Rrowrrw,” Graves responded, looking down at the baby kneazle. Which he meant to mean, ‘I’m always like this on the inside.’

And then Jael tackled him into a hug as he sat back on his four hind legs. He couldn’t help snorting a bit. It was odd and not particularly comfortable, but he still nuzzled his cheek against the top of her head, marking her with the scent glands near his whiskers. He could still smell  _ orphanage _ on her, despite the new clothes and having had her hair washed, and he didn’t like it.

“Mr. Graves, you make a very fine Wampus Cat,” Goldstein the Elder said, once she’d regained the power of speech beyond vulgarities.

“Rwwr,” he replied, which felt much like complete agreement to him.

And then he twitched his tail out of the way, because he could feel Crab Apple trying to catch it.

“He’s the best Swamp Cat in the whole world!” Jael declared from somewhere inside the fur on his neck. She was only very slightly taller than he was when he sat down in this form, though he weighed the same as he did before he transformed, and from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail, he knew he was eight and a quarter feet long. Which meant he could take down a bull moose, or a mid-sized grizzly if he were feeling particularly rageful.

Or sprint away, if apparition was out of the question.

Jael’s fingers were scritching and rubbing in very calming ways at the top of his spine and Graves huffed happily, unable to not enjoy himself.

“Prrrrrowr,” he replied to Jael, which felt like, ‘I love you, too.’

He swung his head to look around at Queenie, who had been quite quiet, and their gazes locked.

Legilimency was shockingly easy in this form, and this time when he read his assistant, it wasn’t an overwhelming tidal wave. Then again, there were only so many people around them this time. He focused with very little effort and was able to hear her alone. It was like picking out the melody held by the first violin in the middle of a symphony.

_ She was overcome with emotion. _

_ She was pleased that he would be able to love Jael as his own child, and was ashamed of her previous reservations on the subject. _

_She was honored to be part of his family,_ which is what Aunt Queenie was obviously becoming at a quick clip. If the child hadn’t obviously already been christened, she would have been a good candidate for godmother.

_ She missed her parents who had both died when she was very young. Tina had finished raising her,  _ which explained that dynamic nicely.

_ She, too, had been in Wampus House at Ilvermorny, and was of two minds concerning his form, now that she beheld him in the flesh. That he would be a full-sized male wampus cat, and thus nearly two hundred pounds of muscle and fur, had taken her by surprise. So which was more appropriate? Reverence or giggling and scratching behind his ears? _

_ Ears, please,  _ he considered.

Aaah, yes. 

Graves closed his eyes in ecstasy as he purred loudly, the sound echoing in the great hall.

There was  _ nothing  _ like getting the area just behind his ears scratched and rubbed.

It did eventually stop, and Graves came out of his trance of utter pleasure. He shook his head instinctively, shifting between ecstasy and alertness. 

And good heavens it had been a while.

As he transformed back, he scooped Jael up in his arms in one motion. She was still clinging to his neck and chattering happily as they walked into dinner.

“When I grow up, I wanna be a Swamp Cat just like you, Percival,” she sighed, as happy as could be.

* * *

“Are you really a police witch?” Jael asked Goldstein the Elder at dinner. Graves noted that the girl had good table manners and didn’t speak with her mouth full. It was a relief to think he wouldn’t have to start from scratch with her.

“Auror, sweetie,” Queenie quietly corrected.

“Auror is such a funny word. Sounds like horror,” Jael responded, then looked back with hope in her eyes to one of his most recently promoted Senior Aurors.

“Yes I am. But I’m not the only Auror at this table.” Goldstein gave him a significant look and Graves continued to calmly eat his miso soup.

Jael tilted her head as she considered him. He continued to eat, waiting for what this oddly ingenious child would say next.

“But you’re old, Percival. You said you were an auror when you were younger.”

He swallowed, calmly wiped his mouth with his napkin and returned it to his lap. The comment about his apparent age didn’t phase him. He was forty-five, and knew he looked sixty-five. It helped in his line of work, and he was thrilled ten years ago when he finally began to go grey at the temples. 

After a moment’s consideration on her point, he said, “No. I nodded. You assumed the rest.”

Jael sighed and rolled her eyes. “Well, are you an auror, or aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Honey, maybe you should get used to understatement with your new father,” Queenie suggested, and the corner of Graves’ mouth might have quirked just slightly.

“What do you mean?” Jael asked as the finished soup course disappeared and pieces of perfectly roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, and steamed carrots appeared on their plates. “Ooo,” she said, noticing the food in front of her.

“I mean, Percival Graves is probably always going to tell you the absolute truth, but maybe not always the whole truth. He’s an auror alright, but he’s not just any old auror. Your father is the head auror in all America. He’s in charge of all the rest of ‘em.”

Jael considered this in wide eyed silence as she attacked her food. Eventually she continued to ask her questions, in between bites.

“How many aurors are there?”

“Three thousand two hundred twenty-eight, in America, active right now. Twenty-nine, if I count myself.”

“You should.”

“Twenty-nine, then.”

More chewing. More thoughtful silence. No one else made conversation, possibly because it couldn’t just be Graves that found Jael highly amusing.

“How many people have you arrested?”

“Personally? Six hundred eighty-one humans, four goblins, twelve merpeople and one obstreperous troll.”

“You ever kill anybody?”

A pause. “Yes,” he said simply and quietly.

“I bet you didn’t like it one bit.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I didn’t think so. You’re like Jesus. He wouldn’t wanna have to kill anybody either.”

Graves blinked at being compared to her God. Favorably. That was a new one.

“You ever get hurt?”

Quietly and simply, “Yes.”

“Anybody ever kidnap you?”

“Yes,” he said, even more quietly.

“I wonder what’s for dessert?” Queenie said, suddenly changing the subject, and Graves couldn’t decide if he was grateful or not.

“What’s dessert?” Jael asked, and Percival sighed internally at her previous life.

* * *

“Master. Master,” Nips said softly, shaking his shoulder.

He hadn’t been deeply asleep, though, and quickly rolled over.

“Master, Nips comes as you said Nips should. Miss Jael Modesty Alice is having a nightmare.”

“Thank you, Nips,” Percival replied, his voice scratchy with sleep.

Nips handed him a small glass of water that hadn’t been present a moment before, but Graves was grateful. He downed it as he stuffed his feet into his slippers and handed the glass back to his elf in return for his dressing gown, which he wrapped around his pajama-clad form. He tied the sash as he walked out the door of his bed chamber and walked into the one next to his, without knocking.

She was crying in her sleep. At least, she seemed to be asleep.

Not entirely sure what to do, but trusting his instincts, Graves gingerly sat on the edge of her bed and started speaking quietly to her. He decided against touching her, lest it add to her nightmare, rather than detract from it.

“It’s alright now, Modesty,” he said softly, thinking that perhaps using her old name would be best for this endeavor. “Shhhh, you’re safe now, Modesty. You’re having a bad dream, that’s all. You can wake up now, Modesty. Everything’s going to be okay. You can wake up now, Modesty. It’s all just a bad dream. You’re safe now, sweetheart. You’re safe now.”

Percival continued on in that vein for what felt like a very long time before she quieted. She never seemed to wake up, but her breathing deepened and her brow smoothed. He waited a few more minutes, just to be sure before he left as quietly as he came.

Nips was waiting in the hallway, wringing his hands.

“Thank you, Nips. You did very well to come and get me.”

The little one bobbed in front of him. “Nips is sleeping in a corner of Miss Jael Modesty Alice’s room, Master, just for a few days, just to make sure Miss Jael Modesty Alice can sleep sweetly.”

“Thank you again, Nips. I appreciate your efforts. Do make sure you get some sleep yourself, now. I don’t think she’ll have another nightmare tonight.”

He bobbed again. “Yes, Master. Nips promises to sleep, Master.”

“Goodnight, Nips. Sleep sweet.”

“Goodnight, Master. Sweet sleep to you, Master.”

* * *

The first day back in the office was just about as difficult as Graves imagined it would be. Everyone stared. There was no small amount of whispering.

The entire first week back in the office would be meetings. He’d already filed his official report from the hospital, but he wouldn’t deal with paperwork of any sort for another solid week, because he had the most important thing yet to do: rebuild rapport with his aurors.

Queenie had set his schedule for him and would be scanning reports and hitting the highlights with him in between his set meetings. As for the meetings themselves, he decided to start with anyone Grindelwald had transferred, demoted, imprisoned, or hospitalized. The list was not short and would take the first two and a half days to cover in one-on-one appointments. Tina he had already finished with while still in the hospital and his general demeanor was that if Grindelwald wanted an auror or clerk out of the way, Graves wanted that person front and center. After all, Grindelwald was a shockingly good judge of character. 

Occasionally during a meeting, he would call Queenie in to ‘take notes’. What he really wanted was note-taking augmented by the talents of his natural legilimens. This was usually when Graves and the other had gotten past the sometimes emotional preliminaries, which always included his heart-felt apology, and into their analysis of the situation, what could have mitigated the disaster, and what could be done to avoid such disasters in the future.

After each such meeting, Graves scanned the notes and congratulated himself, once again, on convincing Queenie to work for him.

Finally Queenie ducked her head into his office after a short knock and announced the time. It was noon.

“Walk me out, Goldstein,” he said, closing a file and putting it back in the drawer before shrugging into his overcoat. He was thinking about how well the process of rebuilding bridges was going with various team members.

“It really has,” she agreed.

He mentally covered who he wanted meetings with for the next three days, including Seraphina at her convenience.

“You got it, boss.”

They got into an elevator, then, with a random assortment of other people off to seek lunch, and he could hear Queenie’s audible sigh. He idly wondered what it was that had irked her, as she was usually so circumspect about what she overheard.

Everyone got off at the first floor and headed towards the grand staircase. Graves walked slowly and Goldstein matched his pace, allowing people to flow around them.

“You know,” she muttered under her breath so no one else could hear. The first wave from the elevator had already all passed them by. “If you could just get yourself a live-in boyfriend, or fiancee or something, it would give the rumor mill less fodder. And it’s only gonna get worse, y’know.”

He replied in the same sotto voce. “It’s not my fault that I see your sterling qualities and others don’t. You do actively seek to hide them, after all. And I have a newly acquired daughter, and one with a strict moral compass. Who recently compared me to Jesus. The last thing I need right now is a live-in boyfriend.”

“You never know. You meet the right guy, you meet the right guy. It’s not like falling in love is convenient.”

She would know.

“Yes, well, I’m going to go out of my way to  _ not  _ meet the right guy, at least for the next decade or so.”

Queenie snorted as they walked out of the doors of the Woolworth Building. “Murphy’s Law; you’re going to meet him in the next twenty-four hours. Have fun with that, and say ‘hi’ for me.”

Graves laughed.

“ _ Goodbye,  _ Queenie,” he said as he trotted down the front steps to the nearest apparition point.

* * *

Jael bounded down the stairs and into the great hall, carefully holding her new Frontier   _ Horizon  _ in one hand and her thick, wool quidditch sweater in the other hand. She was wearing her sport goggles, Wampus House jersey, a flowing pair of girl’s quidditch trousers, which tucked into her new boots, all under her overcoat, which separated in the back as his did, a broomstick modification he had always found useful. She looked like a ball of happy energy, and Graves wondered if he was doing enough to keep an obscurus from attaching to her, provided a vestigial one wasn’t already there.

One of Scamander’s unfounded theories posited that if a child were on a sliding scale somewhere between at-risk and known Obscurial, and that child were to be in a loving environment where magic was safe and cherished, and had small but frequent opportunities to engage his or her own, native magic with his or her environment, that such a situation might starve an obscurus already present, or provide no bait for an obscurus to latch onto to begin with.

Scamander specifically recommended floo travel, broomstick use, potions imbibing (appropriately, of course), interacting with magical creatures (kneazles, puffskeins, or chizpurfles, perhaps, since America has such ‘dreadful’ rules about such things, though hippogriffs, centaurs, mermaids, house elves, thunderbirds, moon calves, wampus cats, or any such beast that a child might safely engage with in a supervised manner would also be excellent) playing age-appropriate wizarding games, and even the sort of play that infants and toddlers get up to - moving soap bubbles and feathers with the child’s will alone. Anything of the sort, provided it was appropriate, must be useful, as the obscurus feeds on repressed magic and negative emotion.

Scamander stressed the presence of a loving, safe, and magical environment, and by no means should any such child be institutionalized, jailed, abused, or attacked in any conceivable fashion.

Essentially, he was now doing everything right, according to Scamander’s unproven theory. Just as Mary Lou Barebone had done everything wrong, with all three of her children, but perhaps most especially with the poor young man Credence. From all of the bits and pieces that Jael had mentioned over the course of the last twenty hours, and what he had known from reports before the incident, Credence - obviously an adult now, but only just barely - had been her whipping boy until the day she died.

Graves still had many questions about the situation, but he recognized that many of those questions might remain a mystery.

How did Credence survive so long?

How did the obscurus get so large?

Why did the obscurus attack what it did - some of the attacks were obvious, but others fathomless.

What on earth did Grindelwald suppose he was going to do with the obscurus?

Did Credence have some small measure of control over the obscurus at the end, before twenty-five aurors and the President simultaneously worked to kill him?

Graves ran a hand through his hair in frustration. Only four hours a day working, and he was mentally exhausted. 

Many questions.

No answers.

Much heartache.

Slow healing.

Large quantities of guilt.

Only tentative forgiveness.

And he relived it all over and over again with each meeting, with each effort at rebuilding relationship and rapport with aurors and staff.

He hadn’t slept much last night, and he dare not take the dreamless sleep he’d been given, for fear that Jael would need him in the night, or that there would be another attack.

Another attack.

His blood ran cold with the very thought. Because if there was  _ another  _ Obscurial, and the papers reported, and Grindelwald escaped, he might very well come back for round two. It was not a farfetched scenario in the least, considering the conditions. More than once Graves had wondered if he was being kept in such good condition so that Grindelwald could not only continue his captivity indefinitely, but also rehash it at some later date.

And there would be no rebuilding his life after that.

But there was no more time to brood, because Jael had reached the bottom of the stairs and bounded over to him, careful to keep her new broom from sweeping the floor.

“Is everything ready, Percival? Are we going to have a picnic now? Are you going to teach me how to fly?”

Jael was bouncing on her heels.

“Maybe,” he responded with a smile. “Let’s see. Nips packed us a picnic, and I have it in my pocket,” he said, patting the breast pocket of his overcoat, the one with the undetectable extension charm on it. “And I have my own broom stowed away, too.” Now he unbuttoned the two buttons of his overcoat that were fastened and showed off his own riding clothes. “I’m all dressed up,” he pointed out.

“And you got your goggles!” Jael said in a sing-song voice that amused him.

Indeed, he did. They were hanging around his neck.

He buttoned his overcoat back up.

“And I see that you are all dressed up, and you have your sweater and your broom. Can you think of anything we missed?”

She shook her head.

“Come on. Up you go,” he said, bending down and holding out his left arm. She wrapped her arms around him and Graves neatly avoided being clocked in the head by her Frontier. As she wrapped her legs around his waist, he helped her adjust her grip on the broom so they could get through the floo without scraping off the finish of the handle.

Graves noticed Nips coming into the room. “All is in readiness?” he asked the house elf.

“Yes, Master.” The elf snapped his fingers. “The floo is open, Master.”

“Close it for all but calls once we’re gone. We’ll be back in a few hours, but I’ll call ahead if we return via floo.”

“Yes, Master.”

Graves tossed the floo powder into the fire and strode forward, saying, “Graves Cottage Adirondacks.” He also drew his wand.

Two cleansing spells later, they strode through the small mountain cottage to look out the front windows. Nips had spent a bit of time here doing some light cleaning and it looked as calming and restful as it always did. 

Percival walked to one of the front windows and twitched back a curtain. The spruce and cedar and pine all around the cabin had boughs laden with snow, and it looked thick on the ground outside. He was reminded that though it did not always snow in December in the City, they weren’t in the City anymore.

“Oooo, where are we?”

“We’re in a mountain range called the Adirondacks. Right now we’re a little north and a little west of where we were before. We’re still in New York State.”

“Do you got this house, too, or is this from a friend of yours?”

“No,” he responded. “This is our cabin.”

“How many houses do you have?” Jael asked, leveling him a stare, inscrutable, as he had no wish to practice legilimency on her without her consent, outside of an emergency.

“Just the two,” he said, grinning openly, considering that before Jael he hadn’t had so much cause to grin.

He could employ constant vigilance, be an even better fighter than he was before, and maybe still have time to grin at his Jael. This was, he considered, the new goal of his personal life. That, and keep his daughter from turning into an Obscurial.

* * *

After a picnic lunch on the covered front porch of the cabin, Jael got her very first broomstick riding lesson. He carefully explained the different parts of the broom, and then demonstrated how to sit on it, using his own older Frontier  _ Western Door _ .

Her broom’s governor would not allow it to fly higher than twenty feet from the ground, nor go more than fifteen miles an hour, which was more than enough for a beginning eight year old.

He tied her scarf around her tightly once she was sitting on her broom, holding on to the handle with both hands, and giggling. Graves then pulled his wand and tapped her on the head.

“That’s to keep you warm,” he said after the thermos, and then tapped her and then himself on the head, “that’s to keep non magical people from noticing us flying around on our broomsticks, just in case there are hikers.” Then he gestured with his free hand. “This clearing of trees goes all the way around the cabin. Now, we own this land for about five miles all around, but I don’t want you going past the treeline today, okay? And you’re never to go into this forest without me or Nips, not until you’re fourteen, alright?”

She nodded, and Graves reasoned that if she was the witch he thought she would be, by the time she was fourteen, she would be a force to be reckoned with, much like her namesake.

Wand out, they both flew slowly off the porch and over the deep snow of the meadow in which the cabin was situated. Ten feet past the house and perhaps six feet off the ground, going possibly three miles an hour, Jael let out a loud woop of joy.

“I’m FLYING!” She laughed. “LOOK AT ME, PERCIVAL! I’M FLYING!”

Graves laughed right along with her before taking her through some very basic drills. By the end of an hour of still boundless enthusiasm, he could tell that she would eventually become quite a good flyer, and that eventually was perhaps not so far into the future as he would wish.

“Now, would you be scared to go faster and higher, with your broomstick tethered to mine?”

She shook her head manically as she grinned and sat up straight.

“Alright. I’m going to secure you to your broom, so you can’t fall off, and then  _ temporarily  _ remove the governor spell so you can keep up.”

Jael made a happy sort of squealing noise that he was becoming quite used to.

He did these things, and then renewed the notice me not spells over them and extended them to everyone else, not just no-majs. While he was at it, he also cast a few spells he’d looked up and practiced last night from one of his mother’s childrearing handbooks.

There was a spell to place a marker on a child, so she could be easily located if lost.

There was a spell to alert a parent if the child strayed more than a set distance from the caster.

There was a spell, slightly more complex - it had eight steps and some tricky charm work, but he’d done most of it last night - to alert the caster if the child were in danger from an outside force.

“Here,” he’d said, handing over a bracelet to her. “I have one, too,” Percival said, showing her his left wrist. “It will tell me if you’re in danger.” 

And it wouldn’t cease with a simple finite, either.

He sealed the adult-sized bracelet around her little wrist with the strongest and most focused colloportus he could, exactly as he had done for his own wrist, last night. It wouldn’t fall off now, no matter what. Nor would it get caught up in her elbow, in her sleep.

“Ooo, it’s pretty,” she said, looking at the silver bangle he’d chosen for her. It was an heirloom, and it had a wide portion with the Graves family crest on it - a wand crossing a bone, with a dementor rampant. The motto  _ semper paratus  _ was engraved along the flat of the silver as it went around the wrist.

“I’m glad you like it,” Graves said amicably, after he’d explained the significance of it. He could have done the spell with a bit of string, but if it was a bit of string she was going to wear well into her teen years, and perhaps beyond, he might as well make it an elegant heirloom, instead. “I’ll take it off you when you’re eighteen.”

She giggled at that, and he wondered how long he’d be able to get away with such high-handed tactics without argument. However long it would last, he was determined to savor it.

Finally ready and convinced he wouldn’t lose the child he had only just adopted, he angled himself to be directly in front of her and then tethered their broomsticks, something he’d done often enough in criminal transport, years ago.

“Ready?” he asked, still craning around to face her.

She gripped her broomstick tightly, adopting the racing position she’d been practicing.

“I’m  _ ready  _ Percival!”

“Here we go,” he said, turning around and accelerating on a gentle upward angle of perhaps twenty degrees until they cleared the treetops by ten feet or so. He paused here, hovering over the trees and turned around to check on her.

“How are you doing, Jael?”

“I’m great!” she said with a smile.

“Not scared?”

“No, sir!”

“Okay. If you get scared, all you have to do is yell out ‘stop-stop-stop’, okay?”

She nodded. “Stop-stop-stop!” the little girl parroted back.

“What do you say if you get scared?”

“Stop-stop-stop!” she said, smiling.

“What if you want us to stop so you can tell me something?”

“Stop-stop-stop!” she replied, still smiling.

“That’s my girl,” Graves said, returning her smile.

“Well, here we go.”

Keeping his altitude level, Graves began accelerating again until he was going perhaps twenty-five miles an hour. When he glanced back, there was nothing but a grin beneath the flying goggles. It fed his own.

He followed the mountains in their generally southerly direction at that slow pace for a few minutes before accelerating to perhaps forty miles an hour. When he glanced back, nothing at all had changed.

Finally, he accelerated to perhaps just under sixty miles an hour, the fastest he felt comfortable going under normal circumstances with her at this age. When he glanced back, what he saw was a picture of perfect childhood joy.

From then on, he stopped being so very concerned, though he flew the entire time with his wand out, and habitually scanned his environment. But he also continued to thoroughly enjoy himself.

It had been a long time since he’d gone flying for the pure enjoyment of it. Then again, it had been a long time since he wasn’t working at two in the afternoon, regardless of what day it was. And flying like this, Graves knew it was rejuvenating, energizing. He could feel it himself. 

He’d always held Sera to a higher standard than himself when it came to things like this - taking time off, time away, getting out and just doing something she loved. But he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done the same.

For the first time, Percival Graves wondered if perhaps Grindelwald had gotten the jump on him  _ because  _ he’d worked too hard and been too worn out. Maybe not entirely, but it certainly could be a contributing factor.

Percival Graves was gathering up contributing factors, collecting them like some people collected porcelain figurines, because he simply wasn’t going to let anything like the imposter incident happen again.

He focused on his breathing and angled a little to the east, smiling now, just because he could. When he found the river, he followed it down the valley at a distance. It wasn’t long until they could see the City clearly, the towers of the no-maj world rising off the horizon like a jagged line of mountain.

Percival twisted his body carefully, intent on keeping the same trajectory as before, but taking a moment to call to Jael and make sure she knew what she was looking at. He also used the moment to check in on her. She still looked happy as a lark.

They came in low, just west of Manhattan, skimming underneath the bridges. He gained some altitude so they could circle around the statue of Columbia, and Percival could hear Jael’s running commentary of amazement. Afterwards, they flew low over Brooklyn and Queens, past all the neighborhoods that separated the heart of the City from their target, the Graves Manse.

It had been a while since Graves had approached his home via broom, but he found the landmarks easily enough. As they approached the main gate, Graves went through his standard ritual of detection spells. The wards were all in place and there was only one being on the property. All was well.

They flew right up to the front door which opened as Percival dismounted. He could feel some slight soreness from assuming the racing position for so long, and considered that stretching and a hot bath would be in order for both of them. He moved around to Jael and finite’d the thermos and all of his protective measures except for those connected with her bracelet. Graves also replaced the governor spell on her broom, then disconnected the two. He picked her up and meant to set her back on her feet, but she grabbed on to him and so he held her close, instead.

He stopped moving when she kissed his cheek, and was mostly insensible to her words of effusive thanks. He was vaguely aware of Nips taking the brooms inside, and when Nips returned, he quietly ordered him to draw her a hot bath.

Percival was still standing on the front entry porch of his home when he blinked several times and wondered when the last time was that he received such affection. Well, there was last night, when he was a cat. And before that? Years? Two decades?

He squeezed her tight and walked inside the open door.

“Now we need to stretch, because being folded in three on a broomstick for that long requires stretching,” he said, though there was no response.

He walked them into his training room (once a ballroom) at the back of the first floor and made to put Jael on her feet. That was when he noticed that she was already asleep.

Graves smiled, kissed her forehead, and wheeled around, heading to her bedroom instead.

* * *

Last night Jael’s afternoon nap turned into a deep sleep, and the poor child ended up simply sleeping fourteen hours. It did her good, he reflected. She was up at six, apparently, and broke her fast with him, her short blonde hair falling in a riot of natural curls and ringlets all over her head as she ate her porridge and eggs.

Percival, too, had managed to sleep to a degree. He had given over the rest of the afternoon to physical training and occulmency meditation, after which he had a hot bath, a hearty dinner, and an early night.

He was asleep as soon as his head hit his pillow.

When Graves noticed that Jael was finished with her breakfast, he downed the rest of his coffee and checked his pocket watch. It was only seven twenty-one, and there was plenty of time.

“Come walk in the garden with me,” he invited, and was not entirely surprised when he felt a hand in his. It was, unfortunately, his right hand.

“Always on my left, dearheart,” he said, still holding her hand and using it to playfully twirl her in front of him, and over to his other side.

“How come?” she very naturally asked.

He pulled his wand quickly and held it out in front of him. “Because I need to be able to do that.” He put it away with a flourish and a twirl.

“But sometimes you do magic without your wand. I seen it. And you weren’t touching your wand through your pocket or anything, neither.”

“You’re very observant,” he complimented, wondering when was a good time to start correcting her grammar. Tomorrow. He would start that tomorrow. “Sometimes, for some spells, I can do wandless magic, and sometimes I can do it silently, too. But I often want to be able to gesture with my hand anyway, and sometimes I want to do something for which I require my wand.”

Jael thought about that in silence as they rounded the front corner of the house. “Is it because you need to be able to catch bad witches? And bad wizards? Because you’re a police wizard? I mean, an auror?”

“That sums it up,” he acknowledged.

“Do you think a bad wizard would come here?” Jael asked, and Graves wondered if all parents had to deal with such difficult questions.

He did not want to lie, and was no fan of varnished truth, but the bold facts of the case were obviously not a good idea right now. His heart clenched, though, remembering how he had failed to protect anyone  _ else  _ who had been in the house the last time a dark wizard came a-calling.

“I think that probably many bad wizards would like to, but I won’t let them,” he summarized.

“Because you’re an  _ auror!”  _ Jael said, instilling the word with so much faith - faith it patently did not deserve - that it almost broke his heart.

He only nodded, and tried to smile.

A moment later, Jael had another question. “Do bad wizards make you sad?”

Oh, she was very observant, indeed. Better not to lie to her, he considered. That would only make her doubt her own very clear perceptions.

He nodded. “Yes, some of them do make me sad, even when I don’t want to be.”

Jael looked up at him and pulled a funny face, her tongue sticking out, squinting one eye and contorting her lips. Graves let a snort of laughter escape before he shook his head at her.

“It’s not  _ your _ job to make me feel better,” he said.

“Then what is my job?” she asked.

“Your job is to play and have fun, learn your lessons, and be a good little witch.”

Jael gasped. “Do you really think I’m a witch? A good witch? Even if I am still little?”

Graves smiled down at her. “Yes. I do.”

Jael starting singing another one of her little songs that she seemed to always be making up on the spur of the moment. “I’m a witch, I’m a witch, I’m a, I’m a, I’m a witch! You’re a wizard! You’re a wizard! You’re a wizard, wizard, wizard! ...You know, wizard rhymes with lizard. You think they did that on purpose?” she asked. She seemed to be finished with her song for now, but he could imagine several more verses. In fact, now that simple little tune was stuck in his head.

“Probably not,” he considered as he rounded the back of the house and moved towards the greenhouse.

He showed her his greenhouse, the worse for nearly two week’s neglect. When she persistently asked about it, he could see no way around it that didn’t smack of unnecessary falsehood.

“Well, a bad wizard captured me, and that was one week, and then I was in the hospital, and that was another week.”

Jael favored him with a critical stare.

“You seem fine,” she pointed out, dubious.

“That’s because I am. I am a powerful wizard and a strong man. I’m not going to fall to pieces just because a bad wizard kidnaps me and steals my face,” he pointed out without emotion, wishing it was completely true.

“He stole your face? Eww. How did you get it back? Was it yucky?”

Graves huffed out an almost-laugh at her misunderstanding of the metaphor. “Well, that’s a figure of speech, ‘stole my face.’ He really used a certain kind of magic so he could look and sound exactly like me. And then he borrowed my memories so he could act like me.”

“Was he caught by  _ aurors? _ ” Jael asked with zeal.

“No, he was caught by a very good wizard named Mr. Newt Scamander who you may have the very good fortune to meet one day.”

“How come he did it? Just because he was a bad wizard?”

“Essentially,” Graves answered, having no current wish to summarize Grindelwald’s cosmology for his eight year old. “And I had something he wanted,” he said, and then wondered why he had.

“What?” Jael asked, hanging on his words as if this were some sort of early-morning bedtime story.

Ah, to say it or not. To equivocate or be blunt. “Access to your brother. And control of all the aurors.”

“What’s Credence got to do with it?”

“Well, it’s like you said the day we met. Credence was a wizard, but he didn’t know it. A very powerful wizard, too. And the bad wizard, he wanted to use Credence to start a war. Which is not a very good thing to do.”

“And so the bad wizard stole your face and became friends with Credence?”

“I think so. I never got a chance to ask either one of them,” Graves said. The reports all noted that Grindelwald seemed to be coaxing and on familiar terms with Credence in the subway incident, but not that he was successful at all. The only wizard who seemed to have any success at communicating and coaxing Credence into rationality had been Scamander.

“I do  _ not _ like that bad wizard,” Jael pronounced.

“You and me both, sweetheart.”

There was silence then, and they walked toward the front of the house, on the other side.

“How do you keep a bad wizard from stealing your face?

Good question. He hadn’t been recently successful, and had been trying to figure out exactly where he went wrong. “I’m still working on that question,” he replied honestly.

“When you figure it out, will you tell me? I gotta be ready,” she pointed out.

Oh, little miss tent peg.

“Would you like me to teach you how to defend yourself in a fight?” he asked quietly.

“Yes!” she said, as if it were an obvious thing he ought to have brought up sooner.

“This afternoon we’ll start. And we’ll do a little bit every day. Got it?”

She nodded.

He checked his watch. It was seven fifty-three, and time to go. 

Percival crouched down to her level. “It’s just about time for me to go to work, but I’ll be back for lunch before you know it. Don’t wander farther than the garden gate, don’t use the floo by yourself, mind Nips, and call out to him if you need help, okay?”

Jael nodded and gave him a hug. “Bye, Percival,” she said to his neck. “I love you,” she added quietly.

Graves blinked in surprise, but held her tightly. “I love you, too, Jael,” he said, and was further surprised to realize it was true.

* * *

The meeting with Seraphina, the first of his day, went surprisingly well. He shared his general plan for rebuilding morale and his progress thus far. He updated her on his new assistant and her abilities, and presented a whole host of red flag scenarios that all ended in the fact that Queenie, after imbibing verita serum and passing under thief’s downfall, could be trusted and should be trusted in all circumstances. He also shared his progress with the child formerly known as Modesty Barebone, and Scamander’s expanded theory behind his work.

“So she’s a magical child, too,” Sera sighed.

“And very likely still at risk for an obscurus, though I am doing absolutely everything he recommends.” Except the hippogriffs.

“I’m glad to see you finally got a hobby,” Sera said wryly.

Graves simply gave her a hard look.

The President rolled her eyes at him. “My office has started to put a package together, and we’re almost ready to try it out on one of our more favorable allies in the Senate, but Val, this would be a whole lot easier if we had some kind of proof.”

Grave scoffed. “I don’t know how you imagine I’m going to get that. I’m certainly not going to put my adopted daughter in danger just to see if she can destroy half the house in a dark cloud.”

“I don’t know either. But I do know these senators. And trust me, Val, they don’t actually care. That’s hard, and I know it, but it’s also true. And I can tell you that without tangible proof, this is all theory and they don’t care about theory, even if they should. It’s much easier for them to spend their time fretting about Grindelwald and blaming him for all our troubles. With proof, tangible proof, we can start getting them scared about the right things. Fear is their primary motivating factor, and like it or lump it, they’re not scared about this yet.”

“Sometimes I hate MACUSA,” Graves pointed out wearily.

“I know. Me, too. That’s why we do what we do. Try and make it better.”

“Is it working?” he asked in the same weary tone.

Madam President assured him that it was before she shooed him out of her office. Graves had two more meetings before his pocket watch chimed in a way it never, ever should.

He withdrew it from his pocket, the dread already hitting the pit of his stomach. He flicked it open and instead of looking at the watch face, read the words inscribed on the interior of the case. Words that were not there ten minutes ago.

_ All wards breached. Graves Manse compromised. _

He was back.

Percival dashed out of his office, grabbing his overcoat as he went and started shouting, heading into the common coffee area for the aurors.

“Queenie, get your sister, meet me on the road in front of Graves Manse, and tell her level one caution,” he ordered tersely as he passed, noting she already had her coat on and her wand out. “Auror teams Selkie and Thunderbird,” he called, knowing they were in house and ready to do anything but more paperwork. “Follow me to the nearest apparition point,” he barked. “Side-along, my lead, level one caution, and get a move on!”

And then he started running.

* * *

Side along apparition for six was intense, but Graves didn’t think twice, his mind calculating scenarios.

“NIPS!” He bellowed at the top of his lungs the moment they arrived. They were in the street just beyond the wards at the front of the property, all disillusioned, and slightly farther away from the house than the family-only apparition point at the back, but the house elf would be able to hear and respond from here. And if he was alive, it was better to know now, and go in armed with what information he could provide.

And if he wasn’t alive and didn’t respond, that was information, too.

And then the young elf apparated directly in front of Percival, looking none the worse for wear, yet wringing his hands as he tended to do when nervous. Graves was surprised at his relief to find his house elf wasn’t dead, just like last time.

“Oh, Master! Nips is so relieved--”

“Tell-me-what-happened!” Graves demanded, his words rushed together.

“Miss Jael Modesty Alice has a visitor, Master.”

His brow furrowed, and instinctively he checked again the silver cuff on his left wrist, just below the edge of his clothing. Jael was still not in danger, unless the magic had failed…

“Who?” he demanded, barely losing any time, even though he was aware of his two auror teams and the Goldstein girls waiting with both impatience and concern.

“Her brother, Master. Mr. Cre--”

“Don’t-say-anything-else!” he bellowed. “Where-are-they? Is-she-safe?”

“Yes, Master. The library, Master. He sleeps.”

“Return-and-watch-over-her!” he ordered, turning around without waiting to see the elf disappear again.

He looked at everyone in turn as he bellowed out orders, speaking just as fast as he always did in an emergency. As he sent them off, they disapparated on the spot. “Queenie, bring me Scamander!” When she did not immediately disappear, he barked at her, “GO!” Turning to the next auror, he continued, his orders a rapid flow of words. “Randolph, bring me the President! Bishop-Malfoy, bring me the on-call triage healer! Fields, Grace, Yang, and Krishnan, do a thorough search of the grounds for danger and debris and warding! Repair physical damage on your second circuit, set the standard thirteen wards on your third. Be careful, be thorough, and take all the time you need. Report to the house when you’ve completed your tasks. Goldstein,” he addressed the final person present. “You’re with me. Follow me in as fast as you can. No apparating, no sudden or intimidating moves once we get into the house. The library is the third door on the right from the great hall.”

With that he shifted and sprinted flat out.

A wampus cat was faster than an arrow, at least over the distance from the street to his front door.

Graves left Goldstein far behind him. The door opened before he arrived at it, and he barely slowed, his paws nearly silent on the entrance tile. He passed through the front hall and into the great hall, skidding on the hardwood as he turned and instinctively gouging into the wood with his claws for purchase. The library door stood open and he sprinted through, skidding to a stand still. The air smelled like a reparo charm, or perhaps several dozen in a string.

He was growling and he only realized it when Jael jumped up from her chair next to the couch. She made to come to him, but he sprang at her, closing their distance in one single bound and he shifted mid-air, landing on his very human feet and snatching his daughter up and into his arms, holding her tight, and right in front of him.

Her arms were wrapped tightly around his neck and her legs were around his torso, and though she hadn’t been visibly upset as he arrived, she burst into tears as he squeezed her to him.

“He won’t wake up!” she cried.

He shushed her and rocked her back and forth. “Help is coming, help is coming. But you’re okay. Are you okay?” He pulled back a little bit to check. He hadn’t smelt blood in his other form, but he wanted to make sure.

“ _ He won’t wake up!”  _ she wailed, crying hysterically.

He shushed her some more and awkwardly drew his wand, not even chastising himself for that danger. He did a basic diagnostic spell on the poor young man who looked half dead on his library couch and discovered that he was really only a quarter alive. He wasn’t bleeding and nothing was broken, but he was still nearly dead. Percival cast a basic stasis charm over him that would be the best and least invasive thing to do until the triage healer arrived.

Goldstein skidded in the hallway and burst in through the doors, only to stop dead, winded, but not out of breath.

“Oh, sweet Merlin,  _ Credence!  _ How…” she trailed off, looking beseechingly at Graves.

Percival only shook his head. He had no idea, unless…

“Jael, Jael, sweetheart, I need you to listen to me. I need you to pray for Credence.”

The girl looked up at him, eyes red. She stopped crying, but was still sniffing. He couldn’t reach his handkerchief, so he wandlessly accio’d it into his left hand and reached around to give it to her.

After she had blown her nose and wiped her face, Graves met her gaze and was silent for a moment. Inside her eyes he saw strength without focus and deep pain.

“I need you to pray to your God for Credence’s healing, and for mercy. Healing and mercy. Can you do that?”

She nodded vigorously and Graves saw the power of her focus, just before she closed her eyes.

At the least, she was calm now. And at the most, Credence might benefit from a combination of divine intervention and the child’s own latent magic, powerfully focused utilizing a method with which she was  _ very _ familiar.

And though he could not have delayed in sending for Seraphina, Graves still hoped against hope that Scamander would arrive first. It was possible, but not probable.

And he was still carrying a child.

He turned to her, loathe to interrupt, but needing to do so. “Jael, do you want Nips to take you to your room so you can pray in quiet, or do you want to stay here with me where it will be loud and there will be distractions for you?”

Jael instantly locked her arms around his neck again, and said from somewhere around his collar, “I can pray just fine here.”

“Okay. I’m going to have to talk with people, but don’t you get distracted. You just keep praying, okay? And if you suddenly don’t hear anything at all, it’s because I’ve cast a silencing spell so we don’t bother you, but I’ll still be able to hear you if you need me. Okay?”

He could feel when Jael nodded. “I’m going to pray now, so stop talking to me.”

Graves found himself smiling a brief smile, despite himself.

Senior Auror Goldstein, watching from but a few feet away looked at him in something like disbelief. “She’s definitely your child,” she muttered.

In the moments before the triage healer arrived, Graves quickly described some of his correspondence from Scamander, and some of his thoughts on how to save an Obscurial. When she moved to touch the young man’s hair, Graves warned her off, explaining the medi-stasis.

Mercifully, the triage healer arrived first.

After a brief argument about moving the young man - the healer insisted, Graves refused, and naturally, Graves won - and when some long minutes later she mistakenly identified him as a squib, he spoke up once more.

“This man is not a squib, Healer Jones. He’s an Obscurial. And that is as confidential as anything else you deal with. Am I  **_perfectly_ ** understood?”

The healer - not young, not inexperienced - paled. “Yes, Director. Of course, Director.”

“And you see now why I refuse to place him in your hospital?”

“Very wise, Director. I’ll be happy to come here to treat him.”

As the healer described what she could understand of his condition - extreme magical exhaustion, physical organs beginning to shut down en masse, no apparent cause - this was when, mercifully, Newt Scamander popped silently into the room with Nips.

Percival walked over to him as Nips disappeared again and shifted his hold on Jael slightly, and moving his wand to his left hand. He held out his right to the newcomer.

“Percival Graves,” he said in introduction. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”

“Newt Scamander,” the younger man said, meeting his eye only briefly. “It’s my honor, truly.”

“This is our expert on Obscurials. Fill him in and follow his advice,” Graves directed to the healer as Newt shifted focus and knelt down next to the couch, placing his infamous and omnipresent case beside him.

Graves shifted position, then, a little closer to the door and a little behind the couch so that he could clearly see both and intercept anyone who came in, yet still overhear all that Scamander and Jones were saying. Goldstein followed him, her arms folded across her chest, the enchanted brown dragon leather of her standard issue Auror coat creaking slightly.

“Now what?” she muttered under her breath.

“Now we find out how many miracles Scamander can produce before the President shows up,” he replied in the same tone.

“Will you…” she trailed off, plugged her ears and then looked significantly at Jael.

Graves nodded just as his Legilimens walked into the room. He drew from the spells he’d practiced the night before, from his mother’s childrearing handbook. They really had thought of everything.

“ _ Sursuruss,”  _ he whispered, careful to aim the spell at the back of Jael’s head. Now all she would hear were quiet murmurs, without being able to make out any words.

“How can he still be alive?” Goldstein the Elder asked quietly, and one hoped, rhetorically.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” Queenie commented.

_ Spill it,  _ Graves demanded wordlessly.

“Well, Mr. Scamander is busy with the healer, but he heard the question and thought of several different answers,” she answered softly. “There’s the possibility that he’s just got a tremendous reserve of magical energy, more so than the average wizard. Mr. Scamander likes that one the most, because it’s the easiest and the most likely to allow him to recover completely, if he can separate out the obscurus. And then there’s the possibility that his extreme physical and mental pain fed the obscurus and kept it from tapping out his magical reserves, whatever they may be. He likes this possibility less, because it means a greater healing time, and maybe a harder time to separate out the obscurus. And then there’s the possibility that it has something unknown to do with Jael, because after more than a week, this is where he has manifested. And then there’s the possibility that it’s a little bit of all of those ideas. And then there’s the possibility that it’s nothing he’s thought of yet.”

Graves nodded, deep in thought.

“Goldstein,” he said, looking at the Elder. “I want you stationed outside of this door until all of the other aurors are gone. No one else is allowed in this room except the President and Nips. Receive the verbal reports from the team repairing damage and securing the perimeter and follow up with me later. And no chatter at all. This is confidential.”

“Yes, sir,” the auror said, leaving immediately and closing the large double doors behind her.

_ Queenie. I want to know everything that is going on in Mr. Barebone’s head,  _ he thought clearly and succinctly.

She moved closer. “Are you sure? He’s having nightmares, I think, and so there’s no telling what basis of reality they’ve got.”

He shifted to look her in the eye. “Everything.”

“Jael can’t hear us, can she? You’re certain?” And then a long pause as she listened. “No, I can’t. Not out loud,” she said, shifting around so he could look into her eyes, and yet still see the closed door and Scamander and Jones out of his peripheral vision.

_ Thank you,  _ he thought, just before looking back into her eyes and taking a deep breath to focus himself before delving back into the riptide that was Queenie’s mindscape.

_ You thank me now. You may not thank me later. How about I just direct you to which thoughts are his, huh? _

_ I have no idea how you do this all the time and are able to get anything else done,  _ he considered, his mental voice seeming to echo in a room full of shouting and whispering.

_ Well, I’ve spent several years just serving coffee and ‘being decorative’ at work. It gave me more than enough time to master my own mind, you know? But enough about me. So, okay. Tina’s this kind of bluish thread that’s feeling all helpful and proud and grateful. Jael’s the one that feels bright orange, and she’s chanting ‘healing and mercy, be whole, be whole, come back, come back’. I’m saying this, by the way, because it’s helpful to acknowledge them and then kinda shove them to the background. The healer is the bright blue one who is struggling between terror, outrage, annoyance, and academic interest. Mr. Scamander is kind of greenish brownish and focused on connecting the dots between all of his different experiences, which can be distracting, because he’s had an awfully interesting several years researching his book. Now, do you hear the thoughts that feel blackish? They swing from horror to yearning? And there’s plenty of your face thrown in? That would be Mr. Barebone. _

_ Oh, sweet, Merlin,  _ Graves thought, just barely able to do as his assistant recommended, pushing the other thoughts out of the way.  _ What did Grindelwald do to that poor boy? _

_ He might have been abused and inexperienced, but I’m pretty sure Mr. Barebone isn’t a boy anymore. And I think maybe that Grindelwald was seducing him. Which is probably going to make your job much harder than it already was,  _ Queenie thought at him regretfully.

_ How far do you suppose Grindelwald went with him?  _ Graves thought before he could censor himself, as he might while speaking. For they had both just seen hands clutching at clothing and lips worshipping skin.

_ Hard to tell, with dreams. How much is hoped for or dreaded, how much is memory, it’s a tough call. You wouldn’t know it now to watch them, but when I first came in, I saw you - well, you know, Grindelwald - slap him and insult him, and Mr. Barebone was just a mess,  _ Queenie thought.

Graves watched as the thoughts from Mr. Credence Barebone changed like the wind. Now Grindelwald was gone, but the person of Mary Lou Barebone was berating him, insulting him, calling him perverse and unnatural, and demanding he should hand over his belt. He did so and she bade him take off his shirt. He did so and the beating began, with a litany of hate borne over the top. It was not easy to witness.

Then Mary Lou Barebone was gone and Grindelwald - wearing his face, which was in turn both bizarre and stomach turning - was back, cooing and shushing and most certainly seducing the broken young man. He healed his back with wandless magic, but continued his caress. Despite the younger man’s general appearance, which might be handsome if only it didn’t so obviously reveal years of abuse and neglect, Graves was in a general state of horror. Grindelwald, using Percival’s body,  _ using his hands, his mouth, his mannerisms,  _ had twisted the heart and mind of this poor, abused young man who in all likelihood received miniscule amounts of regular affection, and likely only that from his little sister. What Grindelwald had done was abuse under another name and it fueled the already present rage that Graves carried, as surely as he now carried his adopted daughter in his arms.

As the two dream figures breathed each other’s names passionately - and apparently Grindelwald had not allowed Barebone the familiarity of his first name, thank Merlin for small mercies - and hands started questing in a southerly direction, Percival had decided he’d seen quite enough. This may be what Queenie was used to, but he was certainly not.

“Enough,” he said softly, tearing his eyes away from hers. “Alert me if anything different or useful arises,” he said, and then chastised himself for his choice of words.  _ Sorry. I really don’t know how you manage, Queenie Goldstein. You have my admiration. _

“Thanks,” she replied quietly, but genuinely.

But his mind was not so under control as hers was, and without his permission, he wondered if she ever had to deal with seeing a man’s lurid fantasies about her played out in the man’s mind.

“Not just once, neither,” she confirmed quietly. “But I don’t blame you, Mr. Graves. If I could choose not to see it, I would, too.”

“Mr. Graves,” a soft voice barely enunciated, and Percival’s attention was suddenly fixed on the couch where a man lay dying and Jones and Scamander had been quietly arguing, until the dying man began to speak.

Scamander silently waved at him to beckon him closer, and Queenie joined him upon his own silent request.

_ Am I now to play the role of Grindelwald? Is this the decent thing to do, or a further cruelty enacted on this broken man? _

“Do it,” Queenie breathed. “Do it for Jael.”

“Hello, Credence,” he said clearly, his voice seeming too loud for a death bed. But he did not want to be missed. “I’m glad you’re here.”

And that was more or less true.

“Modesty…” he said, slurring the name to almost unrecognizability. “Protect Modesty…” His words were hard to make out and it took Percival’s brain a moment to catch up after each word the young man spoke.

“I will protect Modesty with my own life, I promise you,” he said, meaning every word.

And that was all. They waited, all in the room barely breathing, but nothing else was forthcoming and under Scamander’s advisement, a triple strength dose of dreamless sleep was administered.

“Can you save him?” Graves asked of both healer and magizoologist.

Jones answered first. “If he lives long enough, his magic will regenerate. I can repair and restart his organs, but if he’s determined to die, they’ll just shut down again. The longest anyone has persisted in such a cycle is five repair-restarts, and after that they become resistant.”

“How long would that give us?” Scamander asked.

“Depends. On several different factors. Most pertinent is his determination to die, but there’s also that  _ thing  _ feeding on him. Maybe a week. Maybe a month. Maybe six.”

Then it was Scamander’s turn. “I think the potion will help by virtue of its magical properties. I would like as much time as possible in order to attempt to separate the obscurus. Some treatment can be done while he is asleep, but the most efficacious would be with consciousness.”

“But when he’s awake, he gets upset,” Queenie quietly added.

“I have an idea of how we can do this,” said the gentle man kneeling on the floor.

He explained his thoughts and Graves was intrigued.

“Scamander, why don’t you try it on Jael, first,” he said, knowing that his daughter would be in less danger afterwards, rather than more. “I’ve been doing everything you’ve recommended, and if she did have a vestigial obscurus within her, it’s certainly uncomfortable and half-starved now. And if you could preserve it as you did the one from the Sudan, that would be very helpful in convincing the people in power that some of our laws need to change.”

A fleeting meeting of the eyes.

“Erm, well, yes. Yes, yes, I… I need to make some preparations. I don’t, I don’t suppose you have a magical creature about? It might help if she could be touching it.”

“She has a kneazle kitten. I could have it brought here,” Graves said.

“She has a bigger cat than that,” Queenie muttered.

“That doesn’t count,” He pointed out immediately, dismissing the foolish notion, and most certainly not wishing to discuss it in front of the healer.

“I’m sorry, what?” Scamander asked.

“My animagus form. It’s a magical creature.”

“Oh. Oh, I see. Well, no, yes, I’m sure that would be excellent. But if you feel uncomfortable, the kitten would work just as well.”

“While you people discuss esoterics, I’ll just get on with healing this boy, shall I? I’ll be back to check on him at nine tonight, and again nine tomorrow morning, if that suits? Have you a floo I can connect to?”

Graves assured her that they did, and let the healer get on with her work. Then he turned back to Scamander.

“If there’s nothing more you can do presently for Mr. Barebone, make your preparations for Jael. I have a feeling the President is going to arrive shortly, and I would not have us interrupted.”

No sooner than had Scamander, and at his request, Queenie, descended into the depths of what must be quite a large suitcase, indeed, did a knock sound on the door, shortly before it opened and admitted the lone figure of Madam Seraphina Picquery, President of MACUSA.

* * *

She was quiet as he appraised her of the situation as they stood over the dying man. The healer had finished her work and quietly left and the two adults began to argue in earnest.

“He cannot remain in the City. He should already be dead.”

“What if he can be healed? Scamander thinks it’s possible.”

“Excellent. Then you can arrest him.”

Graves rolled his eyes, hoping she was joking. Sera had a refined sense of humor, and it wouldn’t be the first time she had said something of the sort.

“He was no more in control than any other Obscurial, despite the fact that he was twice the age.”

“He’s  _ twenty _ ?”

“Apparently. That’s the healer’s estimate.”

“How is that even possible?”

“Scamander has theories. I’ll get him to write them all down before he leaves.”

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed that he brought that damn case with him.”

“You didn’t imagine he’d leave it behind, did you? If Mr. Barebone does live, it could take months to get the entire obscurus out.”

“Months in which he’ll never get upset or angry? No. Absolutely not. I want him out of my city.”

Graves was not entirely sure which ‘him’ she wanted out. Possibly it was both of them. “Okay,” he said. “What if we took him to my place in the Adirondacks? It’s connected privately by floo to here and nowhere else, and it’s thirty miles from the nearest village. There are no roads.”

“Is it unplottable?”

“No, but it could be.”

“How much land do you own around it?”

“Five mile radius, just about.”

“That’s not enough.”

Graves smirked. “If MACUSA wants to buy the land around it and donate it to the cause, please feel free.”

“I’ll work on it. In the meantime, I want him moved there, and I want it unplottable. And I want whatever comes out of him.”

“I’ll do you one better. Scamander’s extraction method is painless, and we’re going to try it on Jael. If there is anything in her, Scamander thinks its half-starved by now and ready to find a different host or die.”

Sera nodded and moved around him, then, circling and looking at the child in his arms. “Poor little girl,” she said finally. “I never saw you as the family man, Val.”

“Not everyone plans on having children, Sera. Sometimes it happens despite our best efforts to the contrary. And it doesn’t mean I don’t love her every bit as much as if she’d been my own blood.”

Seraphina smirked at him. “Fatherhood looks good on you,” she said softly before her gaze hardened again. “I’ll get as much land as I can and let you know. Get me that obscurus, and for the love of Merlin, get that man out of the City before he wakes up.” 

Graves agreed, and the face of his oldest friend and rival softened again. “And when this crisis is over, invite me over for dinner. I want to meet the only girl to have stolen your heart.”

“Agreed,” he said, moving to walk her out. They passed Goldstein in the hall and he tossed a “be right back” over his shoulder as he waved the front door open and gestured for Sera to proceed him.

They were well clear of the house when she spoke again.

“Now that you have a daughter, are you finally going to find a nice man and settle down? Your father is dead. He can’t disown you.”

“He can disapprove from the grave. It’s all part of the name,” Percival remarked darkly, only partially in jest.

“Just because some idiot ancestor of yours chose a dementor to grace your family crest doesn’t mean you should live a half-life with no joy, Val. Names don’t carry that much power. And they shouldn’t, if they do.”

“I’ve yet to meet a man I’m interested in,” he pointed out with utter truth.

“That’s because you only meet criminals, politicians, and underlings. You need to get out more. What about our little magizoologist? He seems like he would be your type. And the accent is endearing.”

“That may as well be, but I have it on good authority that he harbors a tendresse for Auror Goldstein. And besides, doing a background check on every potential lover doesn’t appeal, either. Stop trying to play matchmaker, Sera. You’ve no aptitude for it.”

She just raised her eyebrows at him and shrugged. “Is a background check necessary, with your new assistant?”

At the open front gate, Percival paused, shifted his hold on Jael slightly, and glared at his friend. “Madam President? Will you please go away?”

“This conversation isn’t over, Director Graves,” she said with her most charming and shark-like smile.

“I’m fairly confident that it is, Madam President. I’ll have an update on the situation for you tomorrow morning. Until then, have a very pleasant day.”

* * *

They adjourned to the blue salon, a sitting room with a view over the back gardens. Nips had provided them with a generous tray of hot cocoa and four different varieties of cookies. Queenie held Crab Apple for the moment. Scamander had what looked like a giant floating bubble of water with scraps of hair in it, which apparently each had just a tiny bit of raw magical power.

And it was time to interrupt Jael.

Percival removed the sursuruss and rubbed her back. “Jael, it’s time to take a break.”

She looked up and Graves saw how red-rimmed her eyes were. His heart broke a little bit, knowing how much pain she was in. But he was not helpless.

He smiled at her. “Thank you for praying for Credence. He’s doing better, and the healer gave him a potion that will let him sleep a good, restful sleep. Later on, we’ll take him to Graves Cottage in the mountains where he can stay until he’s healed.” 

Or until he dies.

“Can I visit him?” she asked, obviously worried. 

“Of course you can. And as he gets better, you can visit more and more. Now,” he said, changing the subject. “I have someone I’d like you to meet. Do you remember the name of the excellent man who captured that bad wizard?”

“The one who stole your face?” she asked.

“That one.”

Jael scrunched up her own face, apparently in thought. “Mr. Salamander?”

“Close,” Percival said with a smile. “Mr. Newt Scamander. He’s come to visit us. How about you hop down and say how-do-you-do?”

She nodded and he put her down. His back was grateful, but he felt the loss nonetheless. 

“Mr. Scamander, may I introduce to you my daughter, Jael Modesty Alice Graves?”

Scamander crouched down, making himself small and slightly lower than Jael. He held his hand out to her. “It’s my pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Graves.”

“How do you do, Mr. Scamander,” Jael said politely.

“I understand you like magic very much,” Scamander said with a small, bashful smile, meeting his daughter’s eyes with no problem.

Jael nodded vigorously.

“Would you like to do some magic with me?”

Jael gasped, and looked back and up at Graves. “May I?” she asked, her eyes alight.

“Yes, you may,” Percival said. It was hard not to smile when Jael was.

“Yes, please,” she said in answer to Scamander. “What do I do?”

“I need you to stand right there, hold your kitten, and breathe deeply. In and out, like this,” Scamander said, breathing slowly and audibly, just as Queenie came forward and handed off Crab Apple.

When Jael had taken half a dozen slow, deep breaths, Scamander continued.

“Very good, you’re doing very well, Jael. Now, you keep breathing nice and deep, nice and slow, and I’m going to see if I can pull something out of you that you don’t need anymore. If I can, we’ll be able to see a dark wisp come out of your chest. Okay?”

Jael nodded.

“You won’t be scared?”

Jael shook her head vigorously, and Graves smiled.

“Now, I’m going to catch the dark wisp in this nice, big bubble of water. I’ve put some lovely little bits of food in there for it. Do you see them? A few hairs from this and that, all containing just a bit of raw magic. Now, are you ready to try? Keep breathing nice and easy.”

Scamander slowly drew the bubble towards Jael. Her arms were up around her chest, clutching her kitten to her, and for a long moment nothing at all happened.

“Have you done anything magical that you really enjoyed, Jael?” Scamander asked.

“I rode on a  _ broomstick  _ yesterday! I said UP! And it went up! And I went up, up, up!”

“What did you like the most about riding on a broomstick?” Scamander asked, and Graves thought he saw something dark enter the water.

“When Percival tied our broomsticks together and we flew above the trees! We flew all the way home! Right to the front door, and Mr. Nips opened the door, and he saw me  _ sitting on my new broomstick!  _ It was the best day of my  _ whole life.  _ Except when Percival adopted me. That was really the best day.”

Graves had chills running down his spine, because there it was, the obscurus that had been in his daughter. Small, perhaps, but extant.

Scamander smiled at Jael and drew the bubble prison away from her. The black wisps, perhaps the size of both of his fists together, had surrounded the hairs in the water. The magizoologist tapped the side of the bubble with the tip of his wand three times.

“That does sound wonderful. And I should like to thank you for helping me do my magic.” Scamander offered his hand and Jael took it.

“But I didn’t do anything, Mr. Scamander,” she said, sounding a bit upset.

“Quite the contrary. You did exactly what I needed you to do, and I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Jael turned to him, beaming. “Percival! I helped Mr. Scamander do magic!”

“You did very well,” Graves confirmed.

Jael’s eight year old face suddenly looked calculating, which was a new kind of adorable for her. “Did I do well enough to snuggle with a Swamp Cat?”

Graves narrowed his eyes. “Briefly,” he conceded. He looked over at his Obscurial Expert and excused himself, promising to return momentarily.

Then he shifted and sat down on the floor, resigning himself to what felt like very public cuddling, indeed.

* * *

Percival Graves knew he needed to heal. And he wasn’t the only one.

“It doesn’t stop with Mr. Barebone,” he argued. 

“What exactly do you have in mind, Director?” the President asked, and both her tone and the fact she used his title in private were red flags.

Graves reined in his temper and spoke calmly. “The problem is, we don’t know the size of the issue we’re dealing with. First off, we don’t know if an obscurus can attach to a squib. Second, squibs haven’t been tracked and even if we had a perfect registry, immigrants add a random variable to that. Rappaport’s Law hasn’t helped this at all, I’d like to point out, because everyone knows two unknown squibs can produce a magical child. 

“We also don’t know if there are just a handful of magical children like Jael out there who already have a vestigial obscurus attached, or many, many more than that. We can do clandestine raids on orphanages across the US to search for squibs and magical children on an annual basis. That’s not a problem. But once we find them? Taking them out of no-maj orphanages and putting them all in magical orphanages isn’t the answer. We’d need to connect these children with loving homes, or that vestigial obscurus is just going to have more to feed on. A sanitorium in the mountains is a good first step, but it’s not the end. And I can’t adopt every single child we find.”

“And that still doesn’t posit an answer to scenarios like the one we found ourselves in. The Barebone children had already been adopted and subject to years of abuse,” Sera pointed out, calmer.

“I know,” Graves admitted. “And the matter has to be handled gently, lest we inflame anti-no-maj sentiment. I’ll be damned if this works out to Grindelwald’s favor.”

“Meet with your kitchen cabinet,” she advised. “We’ll reconvene in two days time. And thank you for this,” she said, eyeing the water-bound obscurus that floated behind her desk. “It will be quite useful.”

“Better in your office than in my daughter,” Graves commented grimly.

She rose to walk him to the door, her features lightening and the lines at her eyes diminishing. “It’s still strange to think of you as having a daughter.”

“It’s good,” he commented. “You should try it,” he said with an uncharacteristic smirk.

Sera snorted. “I am  _ not  _ the maternal type.”

Graves said nothing, but he did raise a single eyebrow in challenge before he opened the door and left.

* * *

The days had been long and the work had been hard. His morning meetings were emotionally exhausting, and every day at noon he came home, had lunch with his daughter, did something magical with her, brought her to see her brother, spoke at length with Scamander, and trained until he was physically exhausted.

Graves had consulted with both a chaplain and a mind-healer, and both had come to visit and assess Jael and Mr. Barebone. Every day the mind-healer came to speak with Mr. Barebone, both to work his magic as well as the mundane magic of his words. Once a week that same mind-healer would do the same with Jael. And twice a week the chaplain looked in on Mr. Barebone, while she visited Jael every other day.

And every day Scamander would take out another portion of the unnaturally large obscurus that was within Mr. Barebone. He kept the first several, merging them together and preserving them for future study. After that, he let them starve.

Graves had kept his distance from Mr. Barebone. Goldstein the Elder had explained the imposter incident and his Legilimens reported that the young man took it well. Still, he was in a precarious position, and Graves would not endanger it. In a month or so he planned to introduce himself, but he needn’t rush it.

There were other things to be done, of course. Queenie had lined up several interviews with potential tutors who would be primarily for Jael’s needs, but who could also include Mr. Barebone in their lessons. There was a house elf auction scheduled for February, and Graves had every intention of attending with Nips to acquire another one or two elves.

And when Queenie had suggested that Graves himself might do well to have a bit of time with the mind-healer, he’d scoffed. An hour later he’d called her back into his office to have her set up the appointment.

After all, Percival Graves needed to heal. And he knew it.


	2. Healed

The second war was worse than the first, by far, which no one thought possible, least of all Credence Graves.

It had taken a world war for Credence to admit what Percival meant to him. When the elder joined the war effort with the MACUSA call for volunteers, he left his post as Director of Magical Security and was accepted as a three-star lieutenant general.

_ It was time to move on, anyway. After this, who knows? Maybe I’ll start a Wampus Cat Sanctuary in Florida. _

But the thought of his own beloved Percival in the midst of war was no less horrifying than the fact that Jael had also signed up. She had been part of the Flying Hellcats, the second broomstick division that had shown such bravery in the Battle of Britain. Credence knew he could do no less, and was immediately accepted as a Lieutenant in the medi-corps, and he served his entire duty on the western front. Not even in his younger years had he imagined such misery as he saw during war.

It had taken that second war for Percival to admit Credence was fully healed and capable of a reciprocal and healthy sort of love.

_ You cannot enlist. I forbid it. It’s too dangerous for you. Especially for you. You don’t know war, Credence. The darkness will be too much for you. _

But it hadn’t been. He’d had all of the obscurus removed in the first two years of therapy, and learning to become a healer, learning to help others had been instrumental in being able to accept help himself.

The first four years were the worst, of course. He’d been desperately in love - and lust - with his benefactor, who persisted at holding him at arm’s length, though he was given enough affection from his Aunts Tina and Queenie. And after that there were several years when he’d decided that he was simply going to be asexual, and that was fine. He had a family, of sorts, he knew what he wanted to do in the world, even if it took him some time to catch up all of his missed schooling.

And somewhere along the line, he’d fallen back in love. Perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps it was fate. Perhaps he’d never  _ not  _ been in love with the beautiful, elegant, powerful man who had first met his eyes during one of Salem’s rallies of insanity, and tried to become his friend. Certainly they had truly been friends for many long years, now.

Twenty years, almost to the day, that Credence crashed through the house in Long Island to land at his little sister’s feet, they had all been back in that house. The dark wizard Grindelwald, who had come so close to destroying all of their lives - intimately as well as generally - was finally, well and truly defeated, and at the hands of a schoolmaster and a phoenix.

“To Albus Dumbledore, and to not underestimating our British cousins,” Credence proposed, raising his tumbler of bourbon.

“Here, here!” Jael and Percival seconded, clinking their glasses before everyone drank to the toast.

“To my courageous and heroic family. Heroes, both of you,” Percival proposed to both the Lieutenants Graves. “And to coming home, safe and sound,” he added, pointedly looking at Jael who had spent more than one round in a healer’s tent. She had been accumulating purple hearts to the extent that she could almost have one permanently pinned to each outfit she owned.

She only grinned, and so did Credence. They drank the toast in silence. 

“To the men I love. Thank you for returning home,” Jael said, and after that toast there were no more.

Finally Jael left them, stretching and yawning, but pointing out that she was going to go for a bit of a run in the mountains before she turned in.

And then they were two.

“Thank you for writing to me,” Credence softly said, his voice almost lost in the crackling of the fire.

“You’re welcome,” Percival responded, just as quietly.

“I think perhaps you didn’t receive all my letters, but maybe that’s just as well,” Credence considered out loud, remembering some of the stupid things he’d said that had never been answered. War did funny things to the mind, even the healed mind, after all. Made you say things you’d not otherwise say. Bare your soul. Admit your love. Ask for what you needed, or thought you needed.

“Oh,” Percival said, something odd in his tone. “I think I did.”

Credence looked over at him, but it was the same old Percival. It was hard to look elegant in an officer’s uniform, but Percival Graves could bring elegance to a house elf’s sack. Still, there was nothing in his softened gaze that hadn’t been there on and off for years. He was, in essence, not much different after the second war than he was before it, at least, not that Credence had yet noticed.

Still, there was something odd about what he had said and the way he had said it. Credence’s silent look asked all the questions he didn’t bother giving voice to, and he simply waited for Percival’s answer.

“Sometimes it’s easier to say things in a letter, but I didn’t want to,” the older man said. “I wanted to look into your eyes and know your disposition for myself. And until I could, I didn’t want to torture either one of us with dreams that might never come true.”

Credence snorted. “I think my dreams have always been about you,” he said to the flames in the hearth, because he couldn’t bear to look into Percival’s eyes, not and also say what he’d only just said.

“I’m sorry,” Percival said with quiet sincerity. “Perhaps I was wrong. Should I have told you how afraid for you I was? Should I have told you that the nightmares I had of holding your dead body in my arms cut differently than similar nightmares of the same with Jael? Should I have shared an old man’s hopes for intimacy, for slow kisses and long nights? Should I have told you that I loved you as more than a brother or companion? You might have asked for how long, and I wouldn’t have been able to give you an answer.”

When the silence lasted longer than a simple pause, Credence glanced up, tears beginning to fill his eyes without his permission. “How long?” he asked anyway.

“I don’t know,” Percival responded, meeting his eyes. “It wasn’t the first time we’d met on the street, nor the second time I saw you, in my library. Perhaps the third time, months later. And I saw how broken you were. And in that moment I knew that if I was drawn to you then, then somehow I was just as broken as you were.”

Credence gasped softly, not quite being able to help himself. So long?  _ So long? And he never said anything?  _

“It made me realize how selfish I was, how if I sought to lose myself in you… I would only make us both worse. The mind-healers agreed, when I told them. They had seen such things before. It was then that I got serious about my own healing. I didn’t want to offer you - or anyone else - only a broken shell of a man, torn apart by his father’s hatred and his mother’s apathy. Grindelwald had killed the only loving role models I had - Tilly and Milly, the family house elves - but I’d been given a chance to start again. With you and Jael. And Queenie and Jacob, and Tina and Newt, and Sera and Joan. And I loved all of you too much to not do everything I could to heal. So I did. And so did you.”

Credence was reeling, and was happy to already be seated. So long? All this time? How?

Percival continued, after long moments of silence. “You can’t tell me at first it was really me you yearned for. I won’t believe you. In your darkest time, even for manipulative purposes, it was Grindelwald who seduced you, and it was Grindelwald you dreamed of.”

Credence huffed out a snort of ironic laughter, grounded once more in truth. “I know,” he agreed. “It took me years to understand it and admit it. Between Mary Lou and Grindelwald, I was a deeply twisted and confused guy.”

“And now you’re healed.”

Credence shrugged. “I’m a work in progress,” he admitted. There would always be some new thing to confront and forgive, some old memory to release. “But I’m a different man, now.”

“Yes, you are,” Percival agreed, putting aside his empty glass and rising from the comfortable leather chair that he’d always favored. “And so am I,” he conceded, offering a hand in a courtly gesture.

The warmth in his palm seemed to envelope Credence as he took Percival’s hand in his, setting his own glass down and allowing himself to be lightly pulled into a standing position.

Percival didn’t stop pulling once he was standing, and continued pulling gently until Credence took two small, hesitant steps, stopping entirely too close.

He’d imagined this more than once.

There would be a frantic tearing off of clothes, lips worshipping flesh and tongues painting masterpieces. There would be thrusting and grinding and begging and groaning, and more orgasams in a week than he’d had in the last year.

“Young cub,” Percival admonished, looking deep into his eyes and smiling one of his small, beautiful smiles. “I’m willing to promise you my fidelity and love for as long as I live, not marathon sex on every flat surface of the house until my heart gives out.”

Credence couldn’t hide his disappointment, even in the midst of what seemed awfully close to an honorable proposal.

Percival rolled his eyes even as he let go of Credence’s hand. Quickly, though, he could feel a hand at his waist, drawing him even closer, and a hand at the side of his face. Credence rested his hands on Percival’s shoulders, his right wrist rubbing against a panel of medals that rested over his love’s heart. A collection from this war, and the last. Somehow it skipped all the honorable deeds and sacrifices his love had made in between, which didn’t quite seem fair, because it seemed, in a way, that they had always been at war. Grindelwald had always been haunting their lives.

“Don’t look so stricken. There will be plenty of sex,” Percival promised against his lips. “I’m sixty-five, not dead.”

Their first kiss tasted of bourbon, as did their second, third, and fourth, and when the kissing ended and Percival led them to his master suite on the west side of the house, Credence knew that the war was finally over.

***The End***


End file.
